Only Human
by SpringsEternal78
Summary: When Dr Jane Foster comes to Steve for help, it leads them to the wilds of Russia on a rescue mission, and it'll take all his friends to take on what they find there. Rated T for serious pain. Cap-centred teamfic; everyone gets to play. Hurt!Steve, Hurt!Tony, Hurt!Bruce, Naked!Clint, wait, what? Find out inside... (Now with scene breaks!)
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: Hi. I wrote the initial chapters of the original version of this story almost a year ago, let it collect dust for several months, and when I came back to it I decided it needed a complete overhaul. Which I did. Then I let it collect dust again while I was busy and, frankly, lost my nerve to post it. I have no idea whether this story is any good so please, please let me know if you want me to continue it. If not, I can move on to other things.

I would, however, hoping that it is worthy, like to dedicate this story to fellow writer Qweb, whose encouraging reviews have meant such a lot. Your example of support is something we should all aspire to. Thanks a million. (And on that note, I encourage everyone to go check out Qweb's work and leave lots of reviews. :-D)

Disclaimer: Nope. Still own nothin'.

His hands were so useless. Why were they so useless? He was accustomed to dexterity, even from before the serum, let alone after. But now he just didn't seem to be able to undo these restraints. He could hear the chaos he'd unleashed ringing all around them; this place was coming down and time was of the essence. He had to get Bucky out of here _now_. His friend stirred in his sleep, groaning faintly. "Bucky?" he called gently. He was still trying to get his unfeeling fingers to obey him, pushing his frustration down deep where it couldn't interfere. "Bucky, wake up, we're getting out of here."

Bucky's tired eyes opened to mere slits. Dark irises rolled under his lids, finding Steve's face, and a frown gathered at Bucky's brow. "Who're you?" he slurred blearily.

"It's me, Buck. It's Steve." Finally! He got purchase on the strapping and pulled it back from the buckle, sliding it free. He smiled at his friend as he moved onto the strap around his other wrist. "I came all this way to rescue your sorry behind, the least you can do is recognise me."

"Who are you?" Bucky asked again, his voice clearer and stronger. Steve looked up, startled by the edge in his tone.

"It's Steve," he repeated, his hands still. He searched for a softening of Bucky's expression but it failed to manifest. Bucky went on scowling at him distrustfully, his brown eyes coldly defensive like a mistreated animal. Looking into them, Steve could hardly see the man he knew as well as he knew himself. "Steve Rogers," he elaborated uncertainly, his stomach tying itself in knots. "You don't remember?"

"I don't know you," growled Bucky.

Steve suddenly remembered what he was doing and set about unfastening the second strap again. "It's okay. I'm your friend. You're gonna be alright. We just have to get you out of- _Uck!_" Steve's words were choked off as Bucky's free left arm shot up and grappled his neck, squeezing his throat shut. Steve grabbed at Bucky's hand, trying to pry it open, and what he felt there wasn't flesh but the hard chill of metal.

He flinched awake. His bedroom was dim with pre-dawn light, filtering weakly through the gaps around the curtains. He sighed, relaxing into his bed. He guessed it wasn't sitting too well with him that he was back home like nothing had happened when Shield was down and Bucky was still out there somewhere. The Winter Soldier's trail was as cold as his handle, and after weeks spent going after anything and everything, he and Sam had been forced to put the search on hold for the time being. Sam assured him that they weren't giving up. They were just giving it the time it obviously required. As soon as something came up, they would be ready. In the meantime, he supposed he'd probably go back to work for Fury as he feverishly endeavoured to rebuild Peggy and Howard's intelligence agency from the ashes of its demise. It was a tall order and the ex-director was going to need some help.

He got up and went for his morning run just a little earlier than usual, fitting in a few extra laps. Sam wasn't around yet. Maybe he was taking the day off. It was a beautiful clear morning, and by the time he was returning to his apartment, the sun was fully visible above the horizon, blazing coolly through the trees. He let himself into his flat and set some coffee going so that it would be done by the time he got back from his shower. He was still getting dressed when he heard an assertive knock rapped out on his front door. He paused with his t-shirt half on. It was only 6.30 and he certainly wasn't expecting anyone. But then, he did know a few early birds and not all of them were guaranteed to call ahead. He pulled his t-shirt on and padded through his apartment, hurrying when an second knocking impatiently urged him on. He went up to the door and peered through the spyhole. On the other side stood a young brunette woman wearing a winter jacket and a Fraggle Rock t-shirt, a leather satchel hanging from one shoulder. She was gripping her arms tightly, looking tense. Maybe even apprehensive. He opened the door.

She looked up at him. "Hi," she started. "Captain Steve Rogers?"

What was he going to do, deny it? "Can I help you?" he asked.

She looked relieved, and stuck our her hand. "I'm Dr Jane Foster. I'm Thor's girlfriend," she added unnecessarily.

He'd recognised the name instantly and accepted her handshake. "Hi, it's nice to finally meet you. Thor talks about you a lot."

She lit up noticeably. "Oh yeah?" Even though he'd never seen a picture of her, somehow she just perfectly fit the image that Thor painted when he talked about her. She had that spark. But this morning she buzzed with subsurface agitation. "Well, I'm really sorry to turn up like this, without warning or anything…"

"That's okay," he told her, stepping aside, "come on in. Would you like some coffee?"

She sighed gratefully as though she'd half expected to be turned away. "That'd be great."

He let her in and led her through to the kitchen. "So is everything alright?" he asked, knowing full well that it wasn't but not letting her nerves affect him.

"Uh… maybe. I'm not really sure," she admitted, hugging herself. The gesture made him wonder fleetingly if it was too cold in here for her. Sometimes he found his standards for comfort were a little different than other people's. But it was nice and warm in his flat.

Steve gave her a reassuring smile. "How do you like your coffee?"

A moment later, he had her sitting opposite him in the living room, perched on the edge of the sofa with her steaming mug. "It's probably nothing," she claimed, convincing neither of them. "It's just he said he'd be back soon and that was just over three days ago."

"Okay. Why don't you go back to the beginning?" he suggested.

She rolled her eyes at herself, apparently for coming here and causing a fuss. "Okay," she agreed. "So, last Tuesday, Thor had some kind of nightmare. It was like he had a headache or something. Which was weird because I've never seen him with either of those things. And Mjollnir was humming and emitting this blue light, I mean it was _vibrating_, you could _see _it. And he takes one look at it and says that something's come to Midgard- I mean," she corrected herself, "you know, Earth."

"What sort of 'something'?" asked Steve.

She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. _He _didn't know either. It was like he could feel that something was here, but he didn't have any specifics. But he seemed to think it was dangerous; he said it didn't belong here and he had to go get rid of it."

"Okay…"

"Okay, so then he left and I haven't seen or heard from him since," she said. "When he didn't come home, I got worried so I pulled satellite imaging from the night he left and followed his path, 'cause I figured he probably went in a straight line-"

Steve interrupted with a hand gesture. "Wait, how did he know where to find the target?"

"He said Mjollnir would lead him to it," she answered. She turned and delved into her bag. "Anyway, I traced his path until I found a small electrical storm which took place over Russia. Here, look." She produced a bunch of print-outs from her bag and rifled through them until she found the ones she wanted and handed them to him. "You see here? Clear skies. And then suddenly…"

Steve studied the images. As she'd said, the first three showed not so much as a scrap of cloud, the time stamps showing that they'd been taken at five minute intervals. Then the fourth, another five minutes later, showed the same area thick with clouds, several patches lit bright with concealed lightning. He was impressed. It was a small area. It must've taken a pretty thorough search to find. When he looked up, he found her gazing at him with hopeful eyes. He nodded and she revealed another page. "The next image is this…" she said.

He took the paper. The clouds had begun to thin out in this one but it was difficult to see exactly because there was a strange bluish pale spot marring the picture. It sat there blurrily, looking misplaced. For some reason, it made him uncomfortable, somewhere deep in his core. "What is that?"

She gripped her mug tightly. Her voice went quiet. "I think it's an afterglow."

He immediately wanted to ask her 'from what?' but it was plain to him that she didn't know. Presumably it was from whatever Thor had gone looking for in the first place. And now he was missing in action? This wasn't good. "You did the right thing coming to me," he said. "We're gonna go out there and find him."

She looked supremely relieved. "Thank you," she sighed. "I really didn't know who else to call. I mean I tried calling Heimdall 'cause supposedly he can see everything and I thought maybe he could send help but he wouldn't answer."

Steve frowned. "Has he ever ignored you before?"

"I've never called him before."

He scrutinised the blue dot thoughtfully. It struck him as odd. He didn't know Heimdall, but if Thor was in trouble why would he ignore it? Wouldn't he have sent someone to go help him? Wouldn't he answer Jane? He didn't have the intel to answer his own questions. He also didn't have much on what Thor had found in Russia. But he knew where to get some. "Well, that's okay," he said, and smiled. "I've got my own friends in high places."

"What could be less suspicious than Iron Man and his superhero friends going on a pleasure trip to sunny Moscow?" asked Tony, pouring more wine into Pepper's glass while she wasn't looking.

"We're not actually going to Moscow, we're going to Sochi," corrected Bruce, lifting the neck of the wine bottle with two fingers to stop Tony pouring too much. "Where it actually is sunny."

"Oh. Does the pilot know that? 'Cause I didn't know that and you'd think with it being my plane-"

"Yes," said Bruce. "The pilot knows."

Pepper raised her glass to her lips and almost sloshed it down her blouse, not expecting it to be so full. She dried her mouth with the back of her hand, staring at her refilled glass, and gasped. "Tony! What are you trying to do to me?"

He just smiled at her broadly and turned to Steve. "Not that I don't love unnecessary use of my private jet, because I really do, but do you wanna explain to me why I'm not just doing a fly-by from New York?"

"Whatever this thing is, it might have grounded Thor," he said tactfully, aware of Jane's eyes on him from beside Pepper. "Can't send you in there without back-up," he stated.

"Yeah, if you think we're letting you investigate a mysterious blue dot on the other side of the planet by yourself, you've got another thing coming," agreed Pepper emphatically. "You're not invincible, you know."

Tony smirked. "That's not what I've heard."

"I appreciate you coming to maintain our cover," Steve told Pepper.

"You're very welcome, but don't thank me for coming, thank me for staying behind in Sochi while you guys are who knows how many miles away," she replied. She smiled, adding, "Hanging around in a five star hotel? Whatever will I do with myself?"

"We'll keep you in the loop," Steve promised.

"Are we sure we can't get closer by plane? It's going to take days to get to the right area on the ground," Jane pointed out.

"I just don't think we can afford to draw any attention," said Steve with a note of regret.

Bruce concurred, "He's right. If the Russian authorities look too closely at this, they could really slow things down for us. We don't want to start some kind of 'international incident.'"

"I dunno, I've always kind of enjoyed those," grinned Tony. Pepper rolled her eyes, looking like she was trying to mentally erase the memories that brought up.

"That's why you're going to stay in Sochi for a couple of days," Steve told Tony. "If anyone comes asking any questions, you and Pepper need to make the vacation convincing."

Tony snapped his fingers. "Done and done. Meanwhile, you guys can enjoy the cramped, rickety train ride/bus ride/car ride to the middle of nowhere."

Steve nodded. "We get as close as possible, establish a base of operations, and then call you in to do the recon."

"Sounds easy," commented Jane, sounding dubious.

They all sat there considering that under a gathering cloud of suspicion. It _did _sound easy. And nothing could be less trustworthy than that. Steve watched Jane turn her gaze through the window, resting her chin on her hand, her fingers covering her mouth. Her eyes might have been directed towards the endless blanket of puffy cloudlets outside but he could tell she wasn't seeing a thing.

It took 53 hours of non-stop travel north-east of Sochi to reach a small town up in the mountains. Tony had already located a large cabin further out in the wilderness and arranged for them to stay there. They drove into the dense forest in their rented four wheel drive, weary from the long journey. Jane had fallen asleep in the back seat almost as soon as they'd left the lot, and Bruce had followed her example in the passenger seat not too long after.

Steve pulled up outside the cabin, scoping the area. It was a good spot. No one was going to find them out here and it was close to the target site (by _his _standards anyway, perhaps not anyone else's). He woke up his two passengers and jumped out to carry their many cases into the cabin. He wished he could've allowed his team to rest up before they got into this but while they had a man missing, it just wasn't an option. He couldn't've held them back even if he'd wanted to. He let the drowsy scientists set up in the living room while he gave the property and its perimeter a quick check. Not only was the snow thick on the ground, but he could see that there was more hanging over their heads in a sheet of featureless white cloud that stretched from horizon to horizon. The woods were so quiet; like all the birds and animals were still asleep, tucked away in the safety of their nests and burrows. He couldn't decide whether that was serene or unsettling. He guessed in this context, with the scent of the unknown almost tangible in the air, it leaned towards the latter. He thought about the possibility that Thor was out in these woods somewhere, perhaps injured, perhaps without shelter. How much cold could an Asgardian take? And what could possibly bring him down in the first place? Unsure what to expect, he went back inside and took his kitbag upstairs to a bedroom at the back of the freezing cold cabin to get changed into his armour. If Tony did run into some kind of trouble, Steve needed to be ready.

By the time he returned to the living area, his companions were decidedly more awake and alert, and were connecting with Sochi. Good thing internet connectivity was not an issue with Stark Tech. They'd set up their equipment at the dining table. The screen on the right showed Pepper sitting in a luscious hotel room. She greeted him and he gave her an acknowledging nod as he came to stand behind Jane and Bruce. A second later, a screen on the left came to life streaming live footage from the minute camera set in the chest of Tony's suit, no bigger than the head of a pin. The images were of a snowy forest zipping by below. "Hey guys," he hailed.

Jane pointed out a red dot moving across a radar-like circle. "We've got your signature, Mr Stark. Passing us in three seconds…" She handed Steve an earpiece like the ones she and Bruce were wearing and he put it in.

"Better be quick if you wanna wave to Santa 'cause these reindeer don't hang around," said Tony as his dot slipped over the centre point of the featureless 'map'.

"Extreme caution, Tony," Steve reminded him. "If you see anything unusual, do not approach; we're here for Thor."

"Coming up on the co-ordinates now," was Tony's reply. The feed from his suit showed a mountainous ridge rising on the left and curving round in a wide half-circle. Inside the crescent, the forest dropped away into an oval valley or crater, the sides and floor of which were void of plant life. "Hello…" Tony mumbled. Steve leaned over Bruce's shoulder, his sharp eyes picking out the subtle greyish shape in the snow, without the aid of the Iron Man suit's visual targeting systems. Tony banked to follow the edge of the crater round the right, staying among the trees.

"Is that a _building?_" asked Bruce, squinting.

"It's some kind of base," said Steve.

"Someone give the Captain a cookie," put in Tony. "I'm picking up an interesting energy signature."

"We see it," said Jane, her eyes flicking through the data that appeared on a another screen like a speed reader. "My god, what _is _that?"

"It's some kind of power source," said Bruce, probably for Steve and Pepper's sakes. "Its frequency looks Asgardian, but it's not like the Tessaract, or Loki's sceptre."

"Whatever it is, it makes my arc reactor look like a double A battery. We've got movement on the roof."

"Pull back," Steve ordered, and the vision of the base at the low-lying heart of the crater veered away, plunging into more trees.

"Just an educated guess but this thing didn't just fall to Earth a few days ago," said Tony. "I'm thinking our boy sniffed it out 'cause someone found the on-switch. The-"

Tony never got to finish his thought, because in the same split second, the readings on the screen monitoring those energy signatures went berserk and the feed from Tony's suit was obliterated. It was so fast that even Steve's eyes didn't register what had cut the feed, but they all heard and felt the roar coming from the distance rumbling right through the foundations and making the windows rattle. After a second's delay, a flash of blue-white light filled the room, making everyone recoil, covering their eyes with sounds of surprise. "_Tony?!" _cried Pepper in horror. "Oh my god, what happened?"

"They fired on him!" Steve could hardly make out his surroundings through the milky mist imposed on his retinas but still managed to grab his shield from where someone had propped it against a wall among their luggage. "They've harnessed the energy source as a weapon. Bruce-"

"I'm on it," responded the scientist immediately, tearing off his coat and gloves and throwing them aside as he ran for the front door. Steve was right on his heels as he stumbled out into the snow, pulling his shirt off and dropping it as his back began to swell. Steve didn't wait for the transformation to take full effect; he overtook Bruce and sprinted straight as an arrow into the undergrowth.

"Oh lord, Tony…" he heard Pepper moan.

"They must've picked up on the suit," said Jane, audibly shocked. "If they've got that kind of detection technology, they must've seen Mjollnir too."

The effect of the flash was taking a surreal length of time to dissipate, and there was still noise coming from up ahead. A distant, earthy thunder rolling and crackling thinly through the trees. "They didn't have a direct line of fire," he said, leaping a set of old fallen tree trunks. "They've struck the crater's edge, I can hear the landslide."

"So it wasn't a direct hit. Maybe it's not so bad," Jane suggested hopefully.

It was bad enough, thought Steve. And he tried to run faster.

Bruce had staggered through the front door into the open air with that familiar flare of heat burning in his heart. It had jabbed at him, and spiked, making him feel strong, flooding his muscles with power. He'd shrugged off and thrown down his shirt, getting started on his thermal long-sleeved shirt. Instead of pulling it off intact, his growing hands had rent it in two. He'd had just enough presence of mind to be vaguely annoyed before a superior rage obliterated the last traces of what outsiders kindly referred to as 'the real Bruce'. In here with the Other Guy, he knew that they might be different, but they were one entity. It was _his _world-shaking anger than blinded his usual clarity, _his _hatred which ripped through the trees, annihilating anything and everything in his path. If they didn't want to get flattened, they shouldn't be in his way. Stupid trees.

He bellowed, feeling with satisfaction the ragged vibration of his massive vocal chords. His voice would shake this valley and make all that heard it quake. His enemies would be smart and run, or they would be crushed to bother him no more. He'd teach anyone who defied him the depths of their mistake. But the ants were not clever. And soon the hum of helicopters reached his sensitive ears and a surge of red hot rage flooded his systems at their insolence, making him faster. He would catch them. He would catch them all and compact them to dust. In mere minutes, he tore up the distance that separated him from his foolish victims and without thought, he burst from the treeline into the void. He wrapped himself around the blindsided helicopter, dragging it down through the air like a sinking stone. It tilted as it descended, his incredible weight pulling it onto its side. Its rotor blades sliced through the snow then struck the frozen ground, flipping the body of the chopper, smashing the tail and sending the wreck skittering and jumping down the slope. He forgot it the instant he spied his next victim, and leapt from its body to continue his rampage. He raced along the naked hillside and launched himself at the buzzing metal insect, grappling its runners and hauling it off its trajectory. He landed squarely and swung the craft over his head, bringing it crashing down at his feet, churning up the mud as he lifted and smashed it again and again, breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces. But he didn't get to complete his work any more than Tony had completed his sentence, because something truly enormous hit him, and out went his angry, pulsating lights.

Steve was running. Really running. Running so that the cold air seared and raked at his lungs, and his muscles blazed at the abuse. The blast had resonated somewhere deeper than in hearing, thundering through the very centre of his brain; that and the flash of blue-white light had almost sent him careening into the underbrush. Miraculously, he stayed on his feet and kept moving so that in the aftermath, the only sounds were of his own legs crashing through the foliage, his laboured breathing and those choppers still in the air. No more Big Guy. Neither Pepper or Jane said a word. He could just imagine their faces as they watched this mission go south so fast it made their heads spin. For his own part, he couldn't afford to be speechless right now. He pressed his fingers to his earpiece to make sure it was secure. "Call reinforcements!" he yelled, partly because the boom had temporarily deafened him somewhat. "Whoever you can get! And tell them no tech!"

"R-Right," Pepper stammered.

"Cap, what're you going to _do?_" asked Jane. "They're way too powerful, they'll take you out!"

"Haven't quite got that figured out yet," he admitted, breaking the branches from an unfortunate pine as he barrelled past. And he really didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't have the firepower or resources to go up against something that had taken out three of his teammates in the blink of an eye. So much for being the man with a plan… "I just have to get there. I'll fix this," he found himself promising them, still visualising vividly their fear and dismay. "I can fix this."


	2. Chapter 2

The woods were riddled with soldiers. Steve watched them from the accommodating anonymity of a tall beech. Their uniforms were grey and generic. Not Hydra then. In fact, they moved like ordinary foot soldiers, and muttered to each other in irritable Russian. It seemed that the search for intruders' bodies was something of an inconvenience. Too bad for them that Steve intended to be a far greater nuisance. He waited for his moment before he took care of them. Strictly non-lethal. But he did pick up a semi-automatic rifle, just in case the choice was taken out of his hands, and continued to make his way up the incline to the crater's edge. He lay flat on his stomach to climb right to brink, the ground falling away in a sheer cliff face. He reached back to his belt and took out a tiny scope.

The roof of the base was open, bearing the internal hangar to the skies. He could even make out a flurry of activity in the form of busy specks. He couldn't see any sign of the weapon though. Evidently they kept it hidden away when they weren't firing it. So they considered its hardware at least _potentially _vulnerable. That was sort of reassuring. Less so was the swarm of choppers in the air. They were sweeping back and forth over the land, a formidable thirteen of them, scouring the terrain below for signs not only of their downed enemies but, Steve guessed, any other trespassers that might be lurking out here. He turned his scope to the vast slick of earth and torn up trees that had poured down the right-hand side of the valley. Tony was in there somewhere. He had to be. God only knew where Bruce was. He backed down from the precipice, slinking back into the cover.

Tony woke by degrees. With his eyes closed, the world seemed to be made of earth and helicopters. He was lying at an angle, his feet above his head. Either that or someone was playing havoc with gravity. Heavy things were pressing down on his face and chest. The air was thick and when he tried to take a deeper inhale, he was rewarded with a mouthful of soil. He bolted upright, choking, and pains ignited like magnesium in several regions at once. The most notable was his right shoulder, which screamed out at him as though assailed by a barrage of red hot needles, sending waves of watery weakness like shock down his arm. He fell onto his left side, coughing and retching, unable to address things with the yelling they deserved until he wasn't suffocating anymore. But it never came to fruition, because then he seized up entirely. He lay there contracted, his chest paralysed, pulling short, shallow breaths in with tears of strain building in his eyes.

Behind him lay the chunks of wood that had been lying on top of him. The one that had been over his face, along with his apparently detached faceplate, had formed a meagre pocket connecting him with the air on the surface, keeping him alive while he'd slept. Even in this state, Tony could feel the bloody graze it had left on his cheek and nose, oozing hotly. The piece on his chest he'd been mostly protected from by his armour, but there were stabbing pains coming through the right side of his ribcage which told him that at least two ribs had been broken. He didn't have to look to know that his armour had been shattered. He could feel it lying in fragments all around him, hanging onto him in pieces. He hadn't known that could happen without him dying in the process. Good to know, for future reference. And he definitely was alive, because no dead person could ever hurt this much.

It was five minutes later that he lifted a tremulous hand to his excruciating shoulder. His fingertips travelled over to the back and found a hard lump. Displaced bone. He groaned miserably. His mind flitted to a desert where he'd lain on his back amongst the dirt and rubble kicked over him by a blast. He remembered the warm sensation spreading across his chest as his heart had pumped blood out into the world. His limbs had gone cool and numb with the sharp drop in blood pressure. Here, there was no numbness, and the cold was coming from outside himself. He was lying still, and the chill had infiltrated him right down to his aching bones. He knew he had to move. His systems were down and there was no one else here to help him.

His legs were stubborn and unco-operative, but he persuaded them to fold, drawing them closer to his body, then began the slow work of re-orienting himself in the mud. It was difficult without any aid from his arms, but he got himself turned around so that his feet were further down the incline than his head. As he did, he got a good view down the massive landslide, all the way down to the valley floor, miles below. The base was crouched like a spider with all its legs tucked in. And it was no doubt just his imagination, but all eight of its eyes seemed to be on him. Helicopters criss-crossed overhead and he felt sure that they could see him, although he realised he was just a tiny speck to them. He was their needle in a haystack. He rolled onto his stomach, moaning quietly, and levered himself up on his left elbow. He gave himself a moment to let the pain subside a little, his breathing harsh. Then he shuffled his arm out in front and began to push forward and up.

He soon became completely wrapped up in what he was doing, letting everything else fall into the background. But it wasn't long after that a helicopter carved itself into his awareness by soaring low over him and his concentration was ripped to shreds by the ear-splitting gunfire that tore along the slope, stitching a great line along the landslide mere feet above him. He ducked his head, being showered in lumps of cold earth and sodden wood. Another line rattled by below and the land collapsed, dragging him with it. He cried out as the downward slide jostled his shoulder. His still-useful left hand raked through the soil, trying to stop his descent, driving his boots into the rolling ground with limited success. After a few moments, it came to a natural stop on its own. But the helicopter was coming back for another round, and punctuated the unstable hillside with heavy fire. He lay there, covering his face with his good arm. There was no getting away from it: he was toast. And as if to prove his point, a wave of debris came tumbling down from above. A slender but dense, saturated tree truck slammed into Tony's dislocated shoulder and he was consumed by a devastating pain chased by insensible darkness.

Steve practically threw himself down the landslide. It flowed and gave way under and around him as he hurtled down it, and he had to constantly rake his gloved fingers through the soft dirt to maintain a smooth balance because, all the time, his eyes were busy scanning for life, and his ears were trained on the sounds coming from the ridge behind him. The soldiers would be at the edge any minute, and it would take them no time at all to spot him if he was still standing this tall. But he was in luck. He saw something away on the right, and took off at an awkward diagonal path towards it. "Are you still there?" he asked.

"We're here," Jane assured.

"Have you found them?" asked Pepper.

"I've got Tony."

"Oh thank god," she breathed, "is he okay?"

"Hold on." He surfed right down next to the body of Tony Stark, lying prone and wearing fragments of an almost completely demolished suit. Steve had seen this suit take machine gun fire, missiles to the chest, even a hit from the Hulk without much worse that a small dent to show for it. The implications for the force involved here were shocking. The arc reactor was damaged, and shone dimly. Good thing Tony no longer relied on it to keep his heart ticking but it might not matter. He was perfectly still and pallid under the grime. Getting down low on his knees, Steve whipped his gloves off and pressed two fingers to Tony's neck while lifting one eyelid open with his thumb. At the same time he watched Tony's pupil contract against the light, he felt the comforting flutter of a strong, if a little fast, pulse under his fingertips. He licked the back of his hand and held it close to Tony's nose and mouth, feeling the coolness of his breath pass over his skin. "He's alive and breathing," he sighed, his relief physical. "Pulse is good." His earpiece became a little active with heavy exhalations of released tension and distant mumbling as Pepper alternated between thanking her lucky stars and cursing Tony for scaring the life out of her. Steve was already feeling Tony's skull for head injuries, slipping his hands under what remained of the cracked helmet. Incredibly, all he found were minor bumps and grazes. The wind carried notes of Russian voices to him. He was almost out of time.

He pushed one hand down the back of Tony's neck. He was no doctor. Not by a long shot. But he knew enough to check for displaced vertebrae before he even thought about moving him. The back of Tony's neck was smooth, so he retracted his hand and gripped the suit's backplate. He grit his teeth and tore the metal apart like he was de-shelling a tortoise in order to continue his investigation. Luckily, Tony's back showed no signs of damage, although Steve was painfully aware that these things could hide. Far more obvious though, was that dislocated shoulder. He did a rapid check down his ribs and found three broken. Limbs were remarkably intact. He went back to that right shoulder. Better to do this while Tony was unconscious anyway. He turned Tony onto his side, pulled his arm forward, and when he found the right position, he slammed it home into its socket. Tony jerked with a strangled noise of horrified agony before going completely limp again.

"What was that?" Pepper demanded to know in alarm as Steve pulled Tony's partially metal-encased form over his shoulder.

"Nothing. We're on the move," he told them, starting the arduous run back up the slope. It was steep and constantly falling away under his boots like sand but the sight and sound of a chopper circling back round from the other side of the valley was enough to make him almost as fast on the way up as he had been on the way down. They held their fire though, because their soldiers had reached the top of the landslide and were beginning a systematic search with what looked like ground-penetrating radar. He gave them a wide berth, staying low behind a swelling of earth. When he had very nearly reached the top, he heard voices calling and peered over to see soldiers swarming round one particular spot. They dropped to their knees and began to dig with their hands under the massive trunk of an uprooted oak. Steve shifted Tony minutely so that he could get down on his stomach and watch through a tangle of obscuring branches.

Between the lot of them, they quickly dug a hollow and one of them jumped down into it. With a concerted effort, they excavated the area either side of the tree and almost a minute after they had come together, they reached down and hauled a filthy and apparently lifeless body from the earth. Steve wasn't breathing. The soldiers stood around as a couple of their number knelt over Bruce and examined him. When they nodded to their colleagues and moved to pick him up, Steve finally let his chest relax. "They've found Bruce," he whispered, forgetting in the heat of the moment, as he always did, to call him the more respectful 'Dr Banner'. "He's alive." Looks like they're going to take him back to the base," he added, getting up and resuming his ascent at a sprint. "I'm going with him."

"You're what?" asked Jane.

"They're out here looking for two intruders," he told them. "And that's what they're going to find. I'm going to give Tony my earpiece and leave him somewhere quiet, then I'm going back to the landslide and letting them find me."

"Captain…" started Pepper, sounding unsure.

Steve pulled himself and Tony up onto the ridge and ran into the woods. "It's our only play, Miss Potts. I have to stay with Dr Banner and I need to infiltrate that base to look for Thor. What's the word on my back up?"

"They're coming," Pepper confirmed, "but it's going to be a while…"

"That's okay. Just make sure they understand the situation here." He jumped a ditch and turned back. He planted a foot either side of the narrow channel, almost completely concealed by thick brush, and lowered Tony down into it. He took off the rifle he had slung over one shoulder and tucked it carefully under Tony's arm. "Okay. I'm gonna leave you now," he informed the women.

"Good luck," said Jane quietly.

He smiled. "Thanks. Pepper?"

"Yes?"

"Yell at Tony."

"No problem," she answered wryly.

He unhooked his earpiece, leaned down and fixed it onto Tony's ear. Then he set off back the way he'd come. By the time he was sliding back down the slope again, the soldiers had removed Bruce and were continuing their search. He went down to a point about halfway between where he'd found Tony and where they'd pulled Bruce out, and made his way slowly and stealthily into their path. He was so exposed here. It was like being in No Man's Land, where every second was lived on borrowed time. Unwilling to push his luck any further, he got down on his stomach and crawled through the dirt. He all but swam in it, tossing fistfuls over himself and rubbing it into his face before 'collapsing' with his face resting on one arm. He used the time it took them to reach him to slow his breathing right down to the bare minimum, and merge all sensory information in one big indistinct ball, letting it roll away from him where it couldn't touch him, leaving him quiet, still and empty. When Russian voices spoke over him, and hands roughly hauled him onto his back, he didn't so much as flicker. He let them drag him by his wrists all the way up the slope and through the forest. After what seemed like an interminable length of time, he was loaded into a chopper and they took to the air.

Tony woke with a cry, bolting upright and grabbing his right arm, which was how he discovered that he was no longer lying under the open sky. He was sitting in a ditch in the forest undergrowth with a semi-automatic rifle in his lap and Pepper yelling his ear. "…you hear me? Tony? You talk to me right now!"

"Y-_Yes!_" he tried to interrupt, attempting to get his bearings at the same time. "Yes, I can hear you! What's with the shouting?" He frowned around at his new environment. "Did I just teleport?"

"Can you walk? Are you alright? You have to move, Tony."

He gripped his arm tighter, groaning. "Ugh, god… Look, honey, I think I skipped a chapter here…"

"Tony, you have to get _out_ of there. Get to the cabin."

It didn't seem like a good time to debate that. He threw the rifle out of the ditch and stiffly heaved himself out after it, staggering to his feet. He picked up the crude piece of weaponry and began a poorly co-ordinated stumble through the trees. "Can I have the Sit. Rep. now?" He caught himself. 'Sit. Rep.'? Who was he turning _into?_ He struggled to get through a patch of brittle bushes, cursing his one remaining Iron Man foot. It was really throwing off his balance.

"Steve got you out," Jane explained succinctly. "But they've got Bruce and he's going after them."

Tony's blood pressure dropped suddenly. "They've got Bruce?"

"Yes, but Steve's on it," Pepper reiterated in a meaningful tone.

"How long ago?"

"About half an hour. Listen, the only thing you need to do right now is get to safety," she urged.

"You guys do know that the cabin is about thirty miles away," he reminded. "It's gonna take me forever to get there. Rate I'm going, I'll make it at about the same time the next Ice Age starts. Not that any of us will notice a difference..."

"I'm going to guide you to somewhere I can come get you in the car," said Jane.

"Great. So I can bail with more efficiency," he griped, wincing with every step that jarred his aching body.

"You're not in any position to do anything out there," said Pepper firmly. "You get back to where you can be useful."

"Fine," he grumbled, holding onto a tree while he extricated himself from a thorny tangle that had attached itself securely to his legs. Once free, he let his hand go round to his injured shoulder, tentatively probing around for that nasty lump. However, he seemed to have misplaced it. Or rather, _re_placed it. "Huh," he uttered. "He put my shoulder back in."

Pepper balked through the earpiece. "_What?!_"

When Steve got home, he was going to learn Russian. He knew French, German, Italian and a little Japanese but anything else was no more than bits and pieces. None of the Russian words he knew were being used here. Once the chopper had landed in the hangar, a man with a brisk, purposeful gait had marched over, hopped on board and subjected him to similar checks to the ones he himself had conducted on Tony a short while ago. The difference was that this man did it with the aid of a stethoscope and a small torch, muttering in astonished Russian the entire time. During the pupil reactivity test, he was given a glimpse of the doctor's hard face. Even without focusing his vision, it was just long enough for him to take in the abundance of frown lines between the man's brows and at the corners of his thin-lipped mouth. Having passed these preliminary tests, he'd been transferred onto what felt disconcertingly like a metal table on wheels and carted off amidst a whole entourage of men.

The real trick to playing possum was timing. There was going to be a sweet spot. A perfect moment in which to make his escape. Sometime between now and when they finally decided to restrain him. The fact that they hadn't tied him down already told him that these people were playing out of their league. They obviously didn't know anything about him beyond what they had heard in rumours. If they'd understood the first thing about his physiology, they would've realised (even if they continued to believe he really was unconscious) that he could wake at any moment. They hadn't even disarmed him; he was still lying on his shield. Amateurs. And these people were toying with a technology that no one on Earth was qualified to understand. He had to refrain from shuddering.

They took him into a lift, going down about four floors he guessed, and then along corridors. He memorised them as they progressed. They made a turn and went through a set of double doors into a wider, shorter space. Definitely a room. Even with his eyes shut and no discernible sounds, he knew it was some kind of medical room. Perhaps it was a scent he was perceiving below a conscious level. He could feel the moment closing in. He could just do with some of these people gathering round, maybe when the doctor instructed them to help remove his armour. Lured into a false sense of security… Maybe when they touched him, like… _now_.

He exploded from the table, booting one man in the face and smashing his elbow and forearm into two others when he drew his arm back for a punch that laid the doctor out cold. Before anyone had even hit the floor, he'd snatched his trusty shield from his back and swept it along the line of soldiers on his left, like a kid running a stick across the bars of an iron fence. Only iron bars didn't usually pitch over backwards with a collection of fractured cheekbones between them. He leapt over them as they fell to rush the others before they could decide whether to fight or run. Pounding his shield into their chests, he knocked them back into each other like he was playing pool, pocketing them two at a time. Firing at him was a mistake. The bullets ricocheted off the vibranium disc and he tilted it downward, aiming their chaotic returns at leg level. No one wanted a knee-capping, and a severed femoral artery was certainly nothing to be sniffed at, but the risk was still better than taking one to the chest or face. The human blockades dropped, screaming and wailing, and the firing stopped. The only man left uninjured lowered his rifle, staring at him with eyes like coins, then took off for the door. Steve threw his shield at the back of his head and it struck home with a hollow clang followed by the thump of a heavy body hitting floor. He caught his shield, took a quick appraising glance at his work and, satisfied that they wouldn't cause him any trouble for a while, waded through them to push the door open and leave.

The corridors were grey, long and dimly lit by half-hearted fluorescent tubing. Noises were dulled by the thick walls, giving the place a claustrophobic atmosphere. He could practically smell all the earth that was piled on top of them. That's when he remembered that he was covered in the stuff, and leaving tracks on the floor; although, thankfully, it was already filthy from the passage of dozens of soldiers' boots. He jogged silently, sidling up to doors and stealing glimpses through their windows. Most looked in on analysts in white coats, beavering away at computers, oblivious to his presence. But just when he'd picked up the pace to affording each room only a fleeting glance, one stopped him in his tracks. The room was dark, lit only by the paltry glow of the corridor that oozed through the glass pane in the door. But Steve had no problem making out the figure on the table.

They'd stripped Thor of his armour. He lay there inert on the cold metal in just his trousers, his eyes closed and his blond hair dishevelled. His chest rose and fell slowly to the rhythm of a deep sleep. He looked very much like he'd been forgotten about. Like they'd poked and prodded him when he'd first come in, and when he'd apparently offered them nothing of interest, he'd been shut away here like an old toy until enough time elapsed that the decision to throw him away would be approved. Steve felt a hard stab of anger in his gut, accentuating his gnawing concern. He grasped the handle, which jarred when he tried to turn it. The keypad on the left of the doorframe offered no clues. And without Shield's handy little gadgets, he was going to have to do this the old fashioned way. He took a step back and kicked. The door flew off its hinges and cracked down on the floor like a double gunshot. Or a starter pistol, since Steve had effectively just rung the alarm. People were going to be all over this place in seconds. In spite of the noise, Thor hadn't even twitched in his slumber. Steve bounded in, grabbed Thor's closest arm and pulled him up onto his own right shoulder. Thor was a good deal heavier than Tony. He jostled him into a reasonably secure hold, wrapping one arm around the Asgardian's legs, and ran out of the room with him like a cartoon villain kidnapping a big blond princess.

His cover was officially blown. When he looked through the doors now, he was met with startled faces waiting anxiously for guards to come protect them. But he paid them no attention, moving on from one to the next until he found a pair of double doors like the ones he'd been taken through. And on the other side was a mixed group of medics and armed men crowded round another wheeled table. All he could see was a pair of dirt-choked bare feet, and that was all he needed. The same second he took in this scene was the same second that the soldiers opened fire, so he ducked, pulled his shield round in front of himself and Thor, and invaded. He tilted his shield upward this time so that dust rained down from the bullets striking the ceiling. He couldn't risk hitting Bruce. It wasn't an issue for long, and these guys clearly weren't prepared for hand-to-hand combat, although a couple of them did themselves proud and tried. The medics made a break for it and he let them go. Everyone knew he was here anyway.

Unless you counted the mud, Bruce was wearing even less than Thor. But he was moving, and that made him the winner. His eyes were barely open, directed at Steve with a worried frown. One arm was loosely raised as though to protect himself, although it clearly hadn't worked since someone had inserted a needle in it, with a tube that was steadily drawing blood into a machine. "Captain?" he enquired, his voice rough and gravelly.

"Dr Banner," he said, reaching out to gently grasp that arm. "Are you alright?"

Bruce didn't seem sure, and faltered. "Uh… Yeah." He broke into a harsh coughing fit and Steve could hear two lungs full of grit working hard to get clear. He turned and put Thor down, leaning him against the wall where he slumped like an over-sized doll. Bruce was still coughing when Steve carefully pulled the needle from his arm and opened the machine to get at the bag gradually filling up with Bruce's blood. There was nowhere to safely dispose of it in here. He couldn't afford to leave them anything to work with. He pulled out the tube, plugged the blood bag with a stopper and tucked it into his belt. "You found Thor," Bruce noticed, trying to sit up with limited success.

"Yeah. But I attracted a little attention doing it so we're gonna have to get out of here fast. Can you walk?"

"Sure. Sounds like fun," he commented, and tensed to at least move his legs off the table.

"Hang on," Steve stopped him. "Let me just pants this soldier."

Bruce lay back down, chuckling.

"Stay behind me!" yelled Steve. He tried to blink the blood out of his right eye, shaking his head to send droplets flying. He shifted Thor on his shoulder again, attempting to keep him safe behind what seemed in situations like this to be a very small shield. Bruce was more than smart enough to do as he was told. The fact that the doctor was wearing an enemy uniform had been enough to garner a few seconds' hesitation from the opposition during the campaign to reach the hangar but they were vastly outnumbered and outgunned. Steve kept his mind on the prize, skirting methodically sideways towards the nearest chopper, returning fire with lethal accuracy. Bruce was covering the way they'd come, inching backwards on weak, anaemic legs. He panted with the effort, sweating trickling down his face. He couldn't go much further, Steve could see that, but that was okay because they'd made it. "Bruce!" he called, prompting the radiation expert to turn round and see that he was standing with his back to a patiently waiting military helicopter. He grabbed the handle and with a terrible effort, heaved the sliding door open. He practically crawled inside, collapsing on the floor.

Steve stepped up into it backwards and wrenched the door shut, a symphony of bullets singing against the other side. He dropped Thor, his shield and his weapon unceremoniously on the floor next to Bruce and dove into the cockpit, jumping into the pilot's chair and waking the sleeping beast up. He hadn't flown this model before but he knew his way around enough aircraft to get her started without any trouble. The whole vehicle was clattering under the constant storm of abuse from outside and Steve's thoughts were on the fuel tank as the blades began to pick up speed. He twisted in his seat, trying to see back into the main compartment as they established the first stirrings of lift. "Are you injured?!" he checked, shouting to stand a chance of being heard. Bruce was slumped against one wall, and shook his head, too exhausted to speak. "Check Thor!" Steve ordered, returning his attention to piloting. They began to rise in the hangar, leaving the enemy below. The beleaguered Russians had begun closing the hangar roof almost as soon as the Avengers had breached the area but it was too slow, and a gentle sideways manoeuvre was all it took to ascend through the narrowing gap. Steve found himself thinking 'Close the blast doors! Close the blast doors!... _Open the blast doors! Open the blast doors!_' In spite of their on-going predicament, he grinned.

"Thor's okay!" Bruce called. His voice was scarcely loud enough to be audible, even though it was a little quieter now without the gunfire. "He's got a minor bullet graze to the leg but it's shallow!"

Steve nodded, relieved, although Bruce probably couldn't see him do it. Remembering, he pulled his cowl off and ran a hand up through his drenched hair. His own graze was already closing up. Head wounds always did have a tendency to overreact. He gripped the yoke with both hands again, one now red and sticky. With the safe house and Tony to the West, he banked East. Yes, he was making more work for himself but it was absolutely essential that the safe house remained secure. The fuel gauge looked good. He could make a wide circle and contact the others from somewhere safe. There was just one more thing that could stop them. He began evasive manoeuvres, weaving left and right.

"Steve!" Bruce hollered, gripping onto the netting on the walls for dear life while Thor lolled back and forth across the floor. "What's going on?! Have we been hit?!"

"Not yet," he yelled back. "And I need you to grab hold of Thor and get ready to be really, really mad."

"What?! Even if I _could_, we're on a _helicopter! _Not the time or the place!"

"Would a freefall be the time or the place?"

"Oh my god…" He gripped the netting even tighter, closing his eyes.

"Just be ready, it should happen any second n-"

The boom washed through the forest, dislodging snow and throwing Tony to his hands and knees in the brush. The remaining shell of his helmet safe-guarded his ears somewhat but it still reduced Pepper's voice to a distant mumble. He blinked hard, the afterglow screening his vision. He twisted at his own cost, to look back in the direction of the base. He hadn't really expected to see anything from here, but he was disturbed to have his cotton wool world penetrated by the distant yet mounting scream of metal falling through the air.


	3. Chapter 3

A cool breeze roused him by licking up the side of his face like a friendly dog. As sensation trickled back into his body, he became aware that he was uncomfortably draped over something that was pressing into his chest. His head was unbearably loud; high-pitched ringing piercing him right through. He opened his eyes slowly and was met with a blurry close-up view of a cockpit dashboard. His right eye was sort of glued to it, and he winced when he tensed to peel himself carefully off it. He held onto the yoke he was lying on. It was below him rather than in front. He closed his eyes, allowing himself a gasp that he couldn't hear as he reached up to feel his neck, where a deep ache ran in both directions, down to the base of his spine and up into his skull. But he all but forgot about it when he opened his eyes again and they took in his surroundings. Most specifically, they took in that the cockpit was liberally sprayed with blood slowly congealing in the cold. There was so much of it that it drew a horrified utterance from his throat (still silent to him) and he battled to regain full control of his limbs so that he could climb out of the pilot's chair. It wasn't easy. It didn't want to let him go. But he wrenched his legs free and stuck his hands through the aperture above his head, and pulled himself up through it. As soon as his head cleared the doorway, he was met with the outside world. A small snowy valley stretched out on either side. In front of him was a hillside littered in wreckage, behind him, the rock face that he'd crashed into.

Steve's evasive tactics had been enough to avoid a direct hit. The blast had clipped the tail, pitching them forward as they broke up in the air. He remembered the vibrations that had consumed the craft when they got hit, absolutely convincing him for the split second he'd remained conscious that he was very literally going to explode. That had to be why his head hurt so much. That, and he was starting to suspect that he'd fractured his face on the dash. He pulled himself up to sit on the cockpit's new exterior, his eyes scanning the deep, scarred up snow for his companions. Drawing his legs up after him and jumping down into an unsteady crouch, he sank into the white up to his neck. He forced himself stand up and wade through it. It was strange to be unable to hear his own movements, like he'd fallen into a silent movie.

"Dr Banner?" he called soundlessly into the vacuum, making for the biggest piece of wreckage, the left side of the ex-chopper. It curved from the snow like the ribcage of a long extinct behemoth. "Dr Ba-" He stumbled against a mass hidden some three feet below the surface. He drove his bare hands into the snow, shovelling it aside. Digging all the way down, his fingers blundered into icy, wet material. He gripped two fistfuls and raised the dead weight. "Oh god, Bruce…" He looked a mess. He was still wearing the uniform, so he hadn't transformed. The Big Guy was well and truly hibernating after his encounter with the Asgardian energy source. Steve lay him out on the snow under the cloudy sky. He had a nasty head wound, that much was abundantly clear. The blood had been partly washed off by melting snowflakes, but there were still traces of it all over the side of his head and down his neck. Thankfully, the bleeding had been slowed almost to a standstill by the cold. It had also evidently poured from his nose although Steve couldn't see the site of impact. There wasn't enough here to explain all the blood in the cockpit. Besides a generous collection of scrapes and bruises, the only other detectable injury was his broken left forearm. Steve supposed the deep snow had softened his fall. "Dr Banner, can you hear me?" he asked without much hope. He thought he'd heard his own voice that time, as a very distant mumble coming through his left ear. No answer was forthcoming. But if Bruce was going to wake up any time soon, it would be when Steve did what he was about to do. Steve gathered the man up in his arms and pushed towards the wreckage to put him down where he had more materials to work with. He ripped the netting from the helicopter wall and tore it into a strip which he wound up and tied round Bruce's head to stop the seepage. It wasn't much but at least it was dry and seemed to do the job. He opened Bruce's wet shirt and packed more netting in and around him to protect him a little against hypothermia.

Now came the unpleasant part. He rolled up Bruce's sleeve to expose his broken arm. The skin was livid, and destined to bruise spectacularly, but it was intact. Unfortunately, the lower half of Bruce's radius was jutting out at an unnatural angle. Steve took hold of the limb with both hands, one either side, the neatly snapped bone sliding around under the skin. He glanced at the unconscious scientist's indifferent face, not sure whether he was hoping Bruce would wake up at this or stay asleep. Then, with a hair-raising crack, he slammed the bone back into alignment. He may as well have done it to a dead body for all that Bruce reacted. But there was no time to sit around worrying. He pulled the sleeve back down and went searching through the nearby debris until he found a foot long bar of metal that he suspected was once part of a bench support. He tore three more strips off the netting and bound the makeshift splint in place. Then he left him to go find Thor.

In reality, it probably took about fifteen minutes to find him. In Steve's mind, it took hours. He had no idea how far from the crater they'd been flung, but the wreckage had fallen over a large distance for something that had been flying so low and the snow hid everything. It had taken painstaking marches back and forth to check every few square feet, with the ominous shadows of Russian aircraft milling around overhead. During the course of his search, he both located his shield and progressively regained his hearing, left ear first. With that, he detected that his balance also improved and he found it easier to orient himself.

Finally, he struck gold and pulled Thor out of a snowdrift. And after all the dire images that had run through Steve's head, Thor was fine. Well, he was looking pretty battered but they all were. In fact, the only sign he'd been through anything was a nosebleed that matched Bruce's. Frowning, Steve pressed a hand to his own face and realised he had one too. He hadn't even noticed. Must have been something to do with being in such an enclosed space when the blast had hit. Steve wilted with relief, bending to rest with his hands on his knees. He'd been sure he was going to find him… Well, it didn't matter. He was here and he was alive. Only where had all that blood come from?

Suddenly the penny dropped, and he looked down at his belt. He'd been so busy worrying about Bruce and Thor that he hadn't thought to check himself. His entire mid-section and upper leg on the left side was stained dark red. From under his belt, he pulled the ruptured blood bag and held it up in the dull light of day. He hung his head and smiled ruefully, tucking it unthinkingly back into his belt. His focus was already back on Thor, shouldering and carrying him back to where he'd left Bruce, because he had to get these men out of here ten minutes ago.

Okay, good; Bruce was still alright. Steve was starting to feel like a mother hen checking on her chicks all the time, but he couldn't help himself. They were so cold and unresponsive. He gave Bruce a companionable pat on the chest, hoping to encourage his heart to keep beating. "Come on, Doctor. Hang in there for me." He moved a few paces away to scavenge the helicopter wall. It still had seatbelts, and strapping that ran along the ceiling. He ripped it all free, and tied enough belts together to make a strap with a quick release catch. Then he set about taking off his body armour and wrestled Thor into it. The entire time he did, he kept his eyes on what he was doing, and his ears on the skies. The choppers were closing in. Satisfied that the Asgardian prince was a little better protected both from the enemy and the cold, he knelt alongside him, pulled his arm up across his own shoulders, and hauled the great weight onto his back. Gripping that arm to hold him in place, he threw strapping over Thor's back and, passing it round his own chest, lashed the demi-god to him. He repeated it several more times to make it secure. With Thor lying along the right side of his back, he knelt again, this time beside Bruce, and proceeded to replicate the process. By the time he was done, he had Bruce on his left and Thor on his right, their heads resting on his shoulders to keep their feet from dragging on the ground. Not an especially dignified way for them to travel but it would do. He picked up the line of belts, threaded his shield onto it, and draped it over his head and left arm so that the shield rested on Bruce's back and the release was at his chest where he could get at it easily. He was just pulling it into a more snug fit when one of the choppers that was haunting him decided to open fire. No time to ease into it; he took off like a greyhound from the gate, ploughing through the waist-high snow with his double burden, and headed for the cover of the trees.

Jane thought she was must be going grey. And she'd always thought of herself as quite a laid-back person. Well, okay, 'passionate' was probably more how other people would describe her, but she'd been pretty willing to go with the flow when a Norse deity had fallen out of the sky and turned her world upside down. But she was a woman of action, and hanging around in this house just waiting for things to happen was not agreeing with her nerves. And besides, she'd had a bad feeling about this since she'd woken up that night to Thor muttering unhappily in his sleep.

It had been almost three hours since Tony Stark had been shot down that morning. Once she'd ensured that Mr Stark was moving in the right direction, south towards the road, she'd turned her hand to getting the safe house warmed up for everyone's return. The heaters were on, she'd gone round sealing up the draughts around the windows with towels, and with a little elbow grease and a box of tools she'd found under the kitchen sink, she'd gotten the hot water up and running. Ever since then, she'd been analysing the read-outs for the energy source.

She'd just started making a cup of coffee when her phone rang, making her jump. She fished it from her jeans pocket, looked at the caller id and answered. "Hey."

"Hey, how's Russia?" asked Darcy.

"It's Russian," she replied.

"D'you find him yet?"

She suppressed a sigh, gazing out at the snow through the kitchen window. "Ask me again later."

"You'll find him. He'll be fine. You hit him with a truck twice, remember? He didn't even blink."

"I'm pretty sure he blinked."

"Well, yeah, okay, but he didn't have the magic power of Myermyer. He was all mortal and stuff."

"Yeah," Jane nodded vaguely. "He'll be okay. I know that. I'm not worried."

"You are such a bad liar. So what's it like being one of the Avengers? Did Captain America carry you over the threshold of the safe house?"

Jane pulled a bemused expression. "What exactly do you think we're _doing _out here?"

"I don't know. I was just thinking that if I went to a house with Captain America, I'd want him to be carrying me over the threshold."

Jane rolled her eyes but smiled. "Well, you know what? He's a little too busy risking life and limb to save _my boyfriend _to carry me over the threshold."

"Too bad. So what are you doing now?"

"I'm analysing the electromagnetic imprint of this energy source. It's amazing, it's got these incredibly complex rhythms-"

"Really? That's so boring. Are you alone then?"

"I've got Tony Stark on hold."

"Well, _that's_ pretty badass. International genius superhero with more money than God (and you'd know 'cause you've got one of those) and you're like 'Uh, no, Mr Stark, you wait your turn, I'm busy; talking to my awesome friend.'"

"Darcy, do you realise how much it costs to call Russia?"

"Nope. But we're on the Avengers' dime, right?"

"Uh, the Avengers don't officially have 'a dime'," she pointed out. "Not since Shield went down. Besides, why would they pay for you to talk to me? It's not like you're working with us."

"Hey, I am totally working! I'm keeping your houseplants alive, feeding your cat, keeping your sofa warm for when you get back-"

"Did you just say 'feeding my cat'?"

"Yeah. He's cute, we're getting on like a house on fire (which your apartment is not, by the way)…"

"Darcy, I don't have a cat."

"Oh. Then I guess I'm feeding your neighbour's cat."

"You're still paying for this call."

"Oh, right."

The line went dead and Jane put the phone back in her pocket and finished making her coffee. She was just taking it back into the main room when she heard something outside and froze like a deer in the headlights. A pair of boots were quietly coming up the gravel drive. Her stomach dropped when she realised she hadn't locked the door after the Captain and Dr Banner left. She darted back into the kitchen and put her coffee down. Eyes wide, she listened to the latch through the pounding of her heart. Looking around wildly, she spotted a rolling pin lying behind a bread board and grabbed for it, running to hide next to the doorframe, weilding it aloft like a baseball bat. She tried not to breathe as the boots crossed the wooden floorboards of the living room, and when they reached the doorway, she swung hard and fast. The man moved like lightning, ducking the blow so the pin cracked against the doorframe, and snatching it out of her hands. She gasped, putting her hands up, but he didn't look remotely like a Russian soldier and he was regarding her without a trace of animosity. "Dr Foster?"

After a second, she found her voice. "Yes?"

"I'm Age-" He stopped himself and started over. "Clint Barton. I was gonna say you've been expecting me but apparently…"

She relaxed marginally, "Yes," and let her hands drop. "Yes, I have been expecting you, just not this soon. Wow, you," she laughed, "you really scared the living daylights out of me. How did you get here so fast?"

"Oh, I was in the neighbourhood," he answered putting the rolling pin down on the nearest worktop and heading back into the living room. He didn't seem at all taken aback or put out that she'd just tried to kill him with a heavy kitchen utensil.

She followed him. "Really?"

He went over to her workstation and inspected the screens. "No, not really. Where are the team now?"

She quickly got him up to speed while he stood there with his arms crossed, listening and asking the occasional question. What time did Steve break contact? How many miles away had he been? Exactly how far from the safe house was Tony now? Once he was satisfied, he strode over to the front door where he'd left a large kitbag. "Okay," he said, putting it on, "I'm gonna get out there, see what's what."

She felt a twinge of nerves. The last two people to leave this house hadn't been heard from since. "Are you sure that's a good idea? We don't even have any comms. There's no way to stay in contact and I won't be able to track you."

"Sounds like most of the missions I've ever been on," he replied easily, opening the door. "Don't wait up. Oh and," he mimed holding a baseball bat, "next time swing from the hips."

For the last few miles, the tree cover had been good, which was a nice break from running flat out. He also appreciated that the snow wasn't as deep here. It was knee-height, crisp and undulating with the uneven ground concealed beneath. The terrain was extremely rugged, with tall stacks and ridges of rock flanked by deep ravines, and he'd been forced to run some pretty precarious paths, with long gulf-spanning jumps that Bruce would be grateful he'd missed. It had pushed them a little further south than he'd've liked, but over the last hour he'd finally been able to turn westward. He only had to take greater care now not to be spotted heading in that direction by anyone able to talk about it.

The evergreens were beginning to thin out. From one, as he passed under it, he heard the dry scrabble of a squirrel in its top branches. It was the first sign of life he'd caught since he'd got here. Perhaps the activity at the base had spooked everything into prolonged hiding. Or perhaps most things had vacated the region altogether, and only the brave or the foolhardy remained. He picked up the pace again as he strove out into more open ground, from a stride back into a jog, moving from the shelter of one tree to the next like he was joining the dots. But, coming up a small bank, he was instantly arrested by a strange feature in the snow. It was a depression, running across his path at an angle to him in a line as straight as a ruler. He paused for just a moment to weigh his choices before deciding to follow his instincts, vaulting a rocky outcrop and landing astride the shallow trench to track its progress south-east.

It disappeared into the root of another bank, and when he cleared away the snow, he found nothing. He stood, perplexed. Then, nudged forward by a hunch, he scaled the bank and found that the line continued on the other side. Whatever had caused it had punched straight through the earth to keep going. He was a touch put off. He couldn't afford to indulge this detour far, but there was a rock face up ahead that would surely have stopped it. He leapt down the miniturised cliff, instinctively bending to absorb the impact for his passengers and chased the line to what he hoped was its termination. He dug through the snow and the back of his hand struck something like a bar, making him grab a hold of it. It shifted minutely when he moved to excavate it, breaking up clumps of snow; they collapsed, revealing a very familiar handle, with a leather strap hanging forlornly from the end. He'd found Thor's hammer.

He stared. He couldn't have felt it shift. Not that he was particularly well-versed in Asgardian technology but he'd made it a point to learn the basics and he was fairly confident that Rule Number One was that only Thor could wield the hammer. He gave the god that slept on his shoulder a look of apology that he was about to even try this. He gripped the handle tightly and when he pulled, it jolted, trying to free itself of the rock it was embedded in. It was stuck, but it wanted out. It wanted _him _to get it out. This was like watching water pour upwards; call it magic, call it physics, it just shouldn't be possible. He understood it as a kind of 'sword in the stone' situation. It didn't matter how strong he was, it didn't make him the rightful king of England. But he couldn't just leave it here.

He grasped it with both hands and planted one boot against the rock, prepared to break the Asgardian law if he was to be inexplicably permitted. He steeled himself for both success and failure. Then, as an imposter on 'King Arthur's' birthright, he pulled.

Clint had worked up to almost a full sprint through the brush by the time an almighty crash sounded off overhead, like the sound of half a dozen wardrobes being pushed over in the sky. It broke his stride as he was compelled to look up and even with his split second reflexes, he almost missed the jagged thread of light that rent the air, connecting the heavy white above with some spot on the ground within the ocean of trees. He altered his heading.

Tony leaned against an elm, his bad arm wrapped loosely round his busted ribs. He fought to compose himself before he reactivated his comm, preferring not to wheeze down the line like a chain smoker doing a marathon. "Was that your boyfriend sending us a postcard?"

"I guess Steve found him!" Jane's voice was brimming with delight, which he could hardly blame her for. She must have been asking herself if they were going to find him alive after almost a week in the wind, in spite of his excellent track record for not dying. "It was a long way off though, I hope they're alright."

Tony almost laughed. Not that he wasn't also concerned on that front but she had someone he knew for a fact _wasn't_ alright much closer to home. Counter to how cold he was, his entire body almost immobile with frozen rigidity, he was sweating. It ran in rivulets down his face and neck and soaked into his clothes, chilling them further. The rifle Steve had left him felt alien against his back, its shape mapped out in the damp. He could hardly move his legs anymore and breathing… Breathing was agony. Not a word of exagerration. Agony. He clung onto his tree, pressing his forehead against it as his limbs locked up. They were ready to give up the ghost, and stopping for even a moment had given them all the incentive they needed. He grit his teeth and tried to shift his left foot but his leg was so heavy, as clumsy as a thick wooden beam would have been in its place. Holding his breath with the exertion filled all the spaces between his ribs rage with fire. He let it go with a gasp, blurting, "I'm not gonna make it."

"What?" asked Jane in alarm.

He winced into his tree. "Tonight. I'm not gonna make it to the cabin tonight. I'm gonna have to find somewhere out here."

"You can't! Mr Stark, you'll freeze to death, the temperature at night-"

"I'm not close enough to the road for you to come and get me and I can't move anymore. I'll find somewhere sheltered and make a fire. Just because I'm not Iron Man right now doesn't make me completely useless."

Jane's silence spoke volumes. Or at least to his imagination it did. She was deferring because he was Tony Stark and he happened to be right, but she wasn't totally convinced that he _would _manage. He could be writing his own death sentence and there was nothing she could do about it. Well, _he _could do something about it. No way was he dying of exposure in the Russian wilderness after everything he'd survived. As far as he was concerned, it was blowing himself up to save the world or nothing. So he put Jane back on stand-by, roared through his teeth, and up-rooted himself.

It took an excruciating half an hour to go about a quarter of a mile. He was winding down like a clockwork toy, getting slower with each passing minute. He had been walking alongside a rockier area for quite some time and once he'd made the decision to ride out the rest of the day and the night, it was this that he headed for. Among the overhangs, he'd found what he'd intuited: very small, shallow caves. Not his favourite thing in the world by any means, but they were the one and only thing that might just save his life out here. So he searched them, painfully and methodically, until he found one that was about five feet deep. After the first two feet, there wasn't enough room to sit up. It was too open, but it was the best he was going to get.

He pushed the snow off a boulder and sat down. When he could do more than just think about it, he slowly bent down and lifted his left foot. He swallowed a grunt as his leg twisted, bringing his Iron Man boot to rest across his right knee. It wasn't easy without tools, and he cut his fingers to shreds doing it, but the damage made it possible to very gradually deconstruct the boot. Comparative to walking through this forest, it was a piece of cake. He reduced it to a lapful of components, some of which were about to become extremely useful. He isolated the thruster and took it apart for some reconfiguration. What he ended up with was much smaller, and not particularly pretty, all clunky with a long wire dangling from it.

He looked around for a suitable victim: a good-sized pine tree thick with needles on its broad branches. Getting up was unpleasant, but the promise of rest and warmth gave him one last burst of energy. He planted himself in front of the pine and threaded the wire of his ex-thruster up inside what was left of his cracked chestplate. It took a while to find the suit's arc reactor, but when he did, he knew it by the small fire it ignited. He spluttered a stream of curses, grabbing a fistful of snow and shoving into the suit's tiny cavities, dowsing the flames. He scowled. Now everything was wet. Brilliant. Although… That might actually help. He moved his fingers futher down the wire for some semblance of safety, and cautiously tried again. The wire sparked but failed to ignite in the damp and the device he was holding burst into life, throwing out a beam of hot light. Tony quickly directed it at his target, sweeping it upward alongside the trunk. Branches were severed from the tree, tumbling in a great heap to the ground, filling the air with the strong scent of singed pine needles. He also happened to be wiping out a whole bunch of trees behind his target but he had to figure his eco-karma was still in the black. He sliced down the other side of the tree, leaving it weirdly two-dimensional, before he let the wire lose contact with his failing arc reactor.

As far as he was concerned, the hard part came now. He lugged his spoils the few feet to his little cave. The sheltered ground was bare of snow, and he dropped everything there while he very slowly eased himself down to the ground and shuffled inside. Then he stacked the larger branches around the mouth of the cave, building layers until the opening was narrow and his cubby hole was gloomy. He stripped and broke up some of his remaining stock, piling it up just inside the opening, then picked up his device and tinkered for a bit, removing a couple of key pieces. Then he linked it up to his arc reactor again. He'd downgraded his laser to a less concentrated beam of light. He didn't have to wait long for the first curl of smoke and, shortly after, some rather meek flames took hold in the wood.

It was done. And so was he. He couldn't hold himself upright anymore let alone do anything else. The moment he saw that his fire was a success, he simply retreated into his cave and collapsed heavily onto his side, exhausted from shivering. He was still wearing that rifle; its strap tugged at him but he couldn't find it within himself to care. It was a whole five seconds before he fell asleep.

The moment the enormous war hammer had broken loose of the rock and he'd taken its full weight, the air had fizzed and crackled with static energy and a bolt of lightning had splintered the air, running straight from the sky to the weapon in his hand. The details of that moment would be imprinted indelibly on his memory. The way the air electrified his skin, raising hair and making every inch of him tingle with an intensity that was almost painful. The world had filled with light, even when he'd closed his eyes, shielding his face with his arm, and the monumental crack of rending air seemed to come from his own sternum, vibrating through his jaw and driving an icepick down his right ear canal. He'd almost dropped the hammer with the impulse to protect his ear but it was too late anyway, the damage was already done. The strike was over almost before it had begun, and left him down on one knee, peering reticently over his hand at Mjollnir.

The ringing was back, just from the one side, and he glanced at his passengers to make sure they were alright. They weren't, but they were no worse now than a minute ago. Still quiet, pale and cool to the touch. At least the three of them were exchanging body heat; that had to be worth something. He brought Mjollnir closer to study it. Could he use it? Or only carry it? And how exactly did a person ask a hammer for lightning? Incredibly, there was an even weirder question: could he access its flight capabilities? Because he'd just called an entire army to their position, and being able to fly out of here would be extremely helpful. He transferred his grip to hold it by the strap and, feeling faintly ridiculous, began to swing it round in vertical circles. He picked up speed, creating a wheel of grey, g-forces tugging gently at his arm. Once he had it up to maximum velocity, he threw its weight skyward, but it only circled back down towards him again. He could feel no lifting force. He hamstringed the momentum, letting it revolve back to a stop. Okay, so no flying. Maybe you had to be Asgardian. Maybe you had to be _Thor_. That seemed fair.

A helicopter blew the leafless canopy of the trees as it soared low overhead. Without taking the time to properly position itself, it spotted him and instantly brought down a bulletstorm. Unwilling to take his shield from Bruce's back to pitch a counter attack, Steve threw Mjollnir underarm. It shot along a beautifully straight trajectory, piercing the belly of the chopper and erupting from its roof, twanging a blade into a withered curl. The hammer turned at its zenith and came gliding back, knocking the tail into a wide swing to the left. Steve reached up and grabbed the handle as it came past him, the helicopter careering out of sight behind the rocks. He wasted no time, pushing Mjollnir's handle under the straps that held Bruce to him, securing the hammer just above his hip, and made it out of there. He could hear others coming. The way the wind travelled, he thought the land dropped away into a ravine up ahead. If he could get to it before the Russians reached him he'd be in a better position to protect his human/Asgardian cargo.

There was no sudden change in gradient. No well-defined edge. But Steve was running so fast that the flat ground seemed to dissolve from under his feet, sinking into a conglomeration of rocks and exposed tree roots that got steeper and steeper by the second. He was forced to curb his sprint somewhat in order to stay on his feet, but his lightning fast reflexes still allowed him to pour down the mountainside. His hands touched on tree trunks and boulders, fleetingly grasping out-reaching branches to steady himself. They scoured lines and plucked nicks out of his bare hands and he could feel the bruises gathering on his arms and legs from glancing blows. A pair of choppers came over the ridge behind him, lining him and his companions up in their sights.

That's why, when he saw the depth of the sudden drop-off ahead, he didn't slow down. He sped up, racing for the edge. He leapt towards the right where a stable-looking boulder marked the brink, his boot planting squarely on its top, and launched the three of them into the air.


	4. Chapter 4

Author's note: Hi, guys. Many thanks to SheWhoRunsMazes and ErinKenobi2893 for letting me know that my scene breaks weren't showing up; that must've been driving everyone crazy! My original documents have nice big breathable spaces between scenes, I've no idea why they didn't transfer and even in editing I couldn't make them stick. Anyway, hopefully, I've fixed things with the magic of line breaks. If anyone notices a random scene switch not marked by a line, please let me know, and my apologies to everyone who felt confused/claustrophobic when they were trying to read! Also, thank you so much for your lovely reviews. They taste yummy. :-D Enjoy the new chapter.

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><p>It was a long way down. Long enough that he could see ahead of time that this was going to be a very bad landing. He was more than twice his usual weight and the floor of the ravine was nothing more than stunted trees and large boulders that had crumbled from the ravine walls. Nowhere good to put his feet. He controlled the fall, and the inevitable termination rushed up to meet him. He felt his left knee pop as it took the majority of the weight as his boot just caught the side of a large rock, pitching him hard to the right into another boulder, a crooked branch that grew between them snapping under his side. He slipped down between the stones, gripping them for meagre support as the pain blew like a fireball in his left leg. The air had been slammed from his lungs and he coughed quietly as it came back. The shock had made his body rigid and inflexible. Regardless, he stiffly and slowly leaned down to feel his busted knee. He braced his foot, steeled himself, and punched it hard enough to hear the crack. He threw his head back with his eyes screwed shut and his jaw clenched so tight to keep the yell in that his teeth squeeked. His breathing was loud, gushing in and out of his chest in deep, abrupt fits, but he reached forward to press his hands against the rocks and hauled himself into forward motion. He kept off his left leg for the first few yards, relying on his right leg and his arms to gain good momentum in spite of the awkward terrain. Even when he did reintroduce his left foot to the ground, he kept the worst of the weight off it as best he could, and made his way along the narrowing gorge.<p>

The thrumming of chopper blades was getting closer, but he couldn't place their position until a harsh rattle ripped through the air at his left and spears of dust erupted from the stone under the contact of high velocity rounds. He bolted to the right, trying to use the cliff face for shelter as the chopper passed over. Suddenly, a noise drifted over his left shoulder, something between a groan and a soft sigh. Steve's heart leapt. "Bruce?"

The helicopter came roaring over the ridge and aligned itself with the ravine, slowing down to open fire. Steve spun to face it, putting himself between it and his wards as the bullets laughed coldly off the rocks around them. Bringing his hand up to release the latch on his shield belt, he felt a red hot line shear through his right side, skimming his ribs as he slipped his shield from its mooring. He whipped it up just in time to hear the ringing impact of several projectiles pinging off its impenetrable surface. He had to keep it a little higher up than usual in order to keep the others covered and a bullet plunged up the length of his left thigh, driving through the flesh along the lateral side to a screaming stop in his hip. The strike pulled a strained note from him and before he could think it over, he heaved Mjollnir into the air towards the chopper.

The sky cracked with a great booming rumble and a light that he was ready for this time, closing his eyes tightly, and he felt the incredible fizzing, snapping, vibrating energy run through his hand and up his arm, prickling across his back and chest, up his neck into his jaw. He bore it out as the light switched off and the surrounding noises shifted towards the injured keening of chopper blades as they tilted and, seconds later, collided with the ground. Steve opened his eyes and spied over the rim of his shield; the body of the downed helicopter sagging among the rocks burst in a ball of juicy orange flames and black smoke. He brought his shield back up to protect himself and the others from any flying debris and the heat that blasted his legs, and felt a twinge of regret. Enemy or not, they were still just men following orders for a paycheck. To them, _he _was the bad guy. They probably felt they were protecting their country. But he didn't have time to dwell on it. He was going to have to repeat his assault when the second chopper found them.

"Bruce?" He tried to get a good look at him but it wasn't easy at such close quarters. "Dr Banner, are you awake?" There was no reply. Bruce felt lax on his back, his breathing slow. "Okay. That's alright," he reassured, "take as much time as you need. I'll get you both out of here." He pushed himself to his feet and his gored leg blazed, traumatised muscles quivering. Blood rolled hotly over his knee, soaking the fabric of his trousers. He turned and tautly resumed his retreat, the graze in his side knitting itself back together as he loped away.

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><p>This time when Jane's phone rang, she didn't bother to check who was calling, she just answered it. "Hey! We found him! He's okay."<p>

"That's great!" Darcy enthused. "I told you he would be. I found someone too. Here…"

A new voice took over the line. "Hello?"

Jane frowned, puzzled. "Hello. Who is this?"

"It's Sif. I have urgent business with Thor, may I speak to him?"

"Sif!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry, he's not here. I mean, we've found him but he's not here right now. What's wrong?"

"Asgard is under seige. The Fire Giants have marched from Muspelheim and are razing our cities to the ground in a surprise attack."

"Oh my god," she slumped in her chair. "Is everyone okay?"

"Our losses are great," said Sif, her voice tight with contained emotion. "Several of our greatest warriors were in other realms, none greater than Thor. The day of the attack, I went down to the Bifrost to bring him home and found the aftermath of a skirmish. The Bifrost has been destroyed."

Jane's heart skipped a beat. "Heimdall?"

"He sleeps and cannot be woken. He has been touched by some magic, and we have failed in our attempts to find a cure."

"If the Bifrost is destroyed, how did you get here?"

"I went to see Mimir, Keeper of the Well of Wisdom, and he opened a door to Midgard. I have journeyed to your abode to find Thor, to take him back with me."

"Thor disappeared. He went looking for something-"

"The Seal of Jormungandr?"

Jane faltered. "I'm sorry, the _what_ now?"

"The price for Mimir's help was something called the Seal of Jormungandr. He claimed that Thor would have it, and we must bring it to the gateway as payment before he will admit us back into Asgard."

"You're trying to save his home, and this Mimir guy wants _payment?_"

"He is not a man of favours, in good times or bad."

Jane sighed. "Okay. How soon can you been in Russia?"

"Which city is Russia?"

"No, it's a country, it's- Oh right, I guess you don't really have a passport," she realised. "Okay, I'm going to hang up and text you the number for Pepper Potts. Have Darcy call her for you and tell her you need to be here."

"Alright. Thank you."

"No problem. I'll talk to you soon."

She hung up and texted Pepper's number to Darcy, making a mental note to herself to delete it when this whole thing was over. She knew from experience that Darcy was not above abusing important phone numbers. Once it was sent, she took her comm off stand-by to check in with Mr Stark and pass on what she'd learned. "Mr Stark?" she called. She waited but there was no answer. "Mr Stark, are you there? Can you hear me?" She found the little red dot which marked his location. It hadn't moved since the last time she'd looked. "Mr Stark, are you alright?" The returning silence was immense, swelling from the line to fill the whole safe house. "Mr Stark..?"

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><p>Steve was hiding as the chopper made yet another pass. It droned so loudly into this narrower part of the ravine that it made the right side of his head ache. He'd definitely done something to that ear. It bothered him every time he exposed it to more loud noises, making it clear that he wasn't leaving it enough time to heal and giving him the distinct impression that if it weren't for the super-soldier serum, the damage would be permanent. The downdraft blew showers of grit and dust off the rocks into their nook under a small overhang in the cliff. Thor's hair whipped at Steve's face and neck, making him wonder how a man so accustomed to brewing storms could stand not having it cut shorter. All the same, he didn't imagine that the Asgardian would be very pleased if he woke up to find it had all been hacked off with a penknife. In fact, it might be grounds for mutiny.<p>

He pressed himself harder into the boulders as the chopper broke out another swathe of exploratory gunfire. They couldn't see their quarry hunkered down here behind the rocks but there was nowhere to escape to. They knew they had them cornered. The stones sang with ricocheting bullets, fragments of ammo and rock chips dancing like raindrops. Steve waited patiently for the inevitable pause in the gunfire, adjusting his grip on Mjollnir. His left thigh and hip were not coping well with him crouching like this. He was still bleeding, and a small puddle had formed under his knee. Even though he could feel that the air was getting colder, sweat trickled down his spine under the pressure of maintaining his position. He breathed slowly and smoothly, keeping everything in check.

The pause had barely begun when he snapped into action. He pushed himself just a few inches up the rocks and thrust Mjollnir out into open air. Lightning struck the hammer and rebounded up into the body of the helicopter with an ear-splitting screech, spewing sparks. The aircraft dropped like a stone into the gully, shattering on impact. The air smelled like ozone, and the ringing assailing Steve's skull again with a chorus of high-pitched tones. Without meaning to, he felt his forehead come to rest against the boulder in front of him. He'd already lowered the hammer onto its top and he let it lie, firmly holding it by the handle while he recovered his bearings. His right ear felt wet and he jolted internally at the thought that something had happened to Thor. He slipped his arm from his shield and lifted his hand to check him but found both his minor injuries and his pulse the same and quickly ascertained that the wetness was his own, he was just bleeding from his ear. The acoustics of the ravine, with its high walls and long narrow channel, had compounded the cry of the lightning; he'd probably ruptured an eardrum. Maybe not for the first time. If it hadn't been such a tight squeeze, he could've protected himself with his shield but as it was, he'd only just been able to wedge it down by his feet. It'd heal, everything always did. In the meantime though, he'd have to be extra vigilant.

He used the boulder to haul himself and his burdens up out of their hiding place, dragging himself out on his stomach. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, ignoring the protestations of his hip, then attempted to regain his footing to stand. He swayed and almost stumbled, his balance impaired, but brought it under control in time. With the hammer in one hand and his shield in the other, he made his way cautiously towards the fallen craft. There were no signs of life. And when he reached it, he found all five members of the crew dead. The side-mounted gun was destroyed, but the three crewmen who'd been in the main compartment all had semi-automatic rifles slung round them. Steve carefully extracted all three, checked them, then slung them over his own shoulder. Then he turned and trudged away from the chopper, further west along the ravine. He didn't want to be within range if it decided belatedly to blow.

He'd been hoping for a break in the cliff but there was none. All he could do was keep moving until he found a section which seemed to have a lot of handholds. Calling it 'a long way up' was the understatement of the month. It looked insurmountable, towering over him like a skyscraper. But it was all he had. He tentatively raised a hand and tapped Thor's cheek. "Thor?" he called gently. "If you're gonna wake up anytime, now would be good…" He waited. Tapped a little harder. The Asgardian was unresponsive. "No?" He sighed. "Okay."He pushed the handle of Mjollnir back under the strapping, and reattached his shield to its belt. Then he got up onto the highest boulder he could find; he reached up, and began to climb.

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><p>Tony was not claustrophobic. A man who spent as much time as possible inside an enclosed suit of gold-titanium alloy, rather than feeling restricted by small spaces, tended, if anything, to feel more secure. When he was inside his suit, he was protected from the world. He could do anything. Go anywhere. But now he was somewhere cramped, rough, and generally unwholesome. And it was bad. He couldn't even have expressed why, because he couldn't quite remember where he was. He was cold, and shivered violently, gripping at his arms and pulling at his wet clothes. But he was also so hot that he couldn't stand it and he writhed in a drenching sweat, blindly striving for more room, his arms striking stone. He couldn't stretch his legs out, and he was trapped between a rock and a hot place, which he shuffled towards and backed away from in turns. Everything was so wrong. He felt like he'd been poisoned, or hit by a truck, he couldn't discern the difference right now. All he knew was, he needed help. "Jarvis," he muttered. "Jarvis…"<p>

"Jarvis, what's going on with the temerature controls?" he gasped, lying on the floor of his lab in Malibu. There was dust and small chips of rubble under him from the hole he'd blown in the ceiling. He couldn't recall what he'd been doing. He must've been in a beatdown, but in that case, why was it so quiet? "Jarvis?" He lifted his head to listen but it drove invisible daggers into his chest. He tried to cry out but it surfaced as a long, drawn-out moan that sounded so unlike him that he flinched, thinking that some weird alien animal was standing over him. Ignoring the pain it triggered, he moved to scuttle away but couldn't: the wires pulled taut, stopping him short. With one half-numb hand, he found thick cables running from the car battery to the bandages around his chest. The moment his fingers scratched the gauze, he choked. "Oh god," he breathed.

"Tony?"

He looked around wildly in the dusty dark. "Pepper?" He swallowed dryly. "No. Nononono, you can't be here. You have to get out of here- Roadie, get her out of here! Roadie? Roadie!" He clutched at the metal bedframe, desperate to get up. "Agh! Come on!" He was zip-tied. He didn't have his suit. And Maya was lying dead on the floor, a bullet hole in her chest. Kilian grinned his wide mouthful of white teeth, his eyes glittering with cold humour. "Wh- Where is she?" Tony demanded. His voice was forceless, croaking.

"It's a shame," Kilian admitted. "I would've preferred that she lived."

Tony balked, confused. "Wait, what?"

Obediah leaned closer to repeat himself. "I would've preferred that she lived."

Tony let out a wounded groan. "What did you do to me? Where is she? Where's Pepper?"

The Mandarin. The explosion. He wasn't in the lab, the lab was downstairs. The Mandarin sent a missile. Blew up the house. So stupid, he should never have given out his address, should never have dared him. Put Pepper in danger. What was he thinking? And Maya… Maya had come to talk and Kilian had shot her. No, wait… Obediah Stain..?

He shook his head. Things were so mixed up, he couldn't get them straight. The floor wasn't flat enough. He could feel the heat of a fire. The fire! He caught a glimpse of it, flickering brightly against the backdrop of pine branches. Its rising warmth created a barrier to the outside, locking him in with his own body heat, but it had burned a little low. He needed to get some sleep, ride out this fever. But if he was going to do that, this fire needed to keep going for him. If it went out and he didn't wake up, he'd freeze to death. He curled up, reaching down to his feet where he'd left the pile of pinewood, and dragged some larger pieces onto the pyre. That should extend its life by a few hours.

He relaxed again. He was so tired he couldn't believe he was still awake. Sleep would be such a relief. Such an escape from this nightmare. The strap of the semi-automatic was tight but he couldn't summon the willpower to wriggle out of it. He just wanted to lie here, inviting oblivion as openly as he could, inticing it into his brain with the promise of complete subjugation. He'd surrender, if it would only come and take him.

This was the worst hangover he'd had in years. He shouldn't be drinking at all. Not while he was burning through palladium cores like they were going out of style. Oh god, he felt like death warmed up, when was this going to end? Where was Pepper? "Jarvis?" he called weakly. He pulled at the strap at his shoulder, sighing unhappily. "Jarvis?..."

* * *

><p>Evening was closing in fast. The dull light was fading behind the thick clouds and the temperature was plummeting. The cold air was itching madly in Clint's throat as he panted with his hands on his knees. His body heat was fading now that he'd stopped running. He straightened up, relocating his hands to his hips, and bounced a little on the balls of his feet in an attempt to keep his leg muscles from seizing up. It'd been hours since he'd seen or heard any sign of his teammates. He couldn't be sure where any of them were or what state they were in. He just maintained a course for the storm of enemy activity as they persisted in their search from the air and on the ground. He'd seen scores of soldiers being air-dropped into the forest. Frankly, under different circumstances, he wouldn't even consider going into this. He'd've found alternatives to going completely solo against hundreds of armed and alerted men in uncharted territory. They just didn't have sufficient intel. And truthfully, if this had been a Shield op, Fury would never have approved it. But until he was given clear evidence to the contrary, he had to assume that he had fellow Avengers alive out there. They needed him. However, even with all those threats arrayed across his near future, Clint had a more immediate obstacle making his life difficult.<p>

He stared down the river that glided by before him. Its waters were grey and icy-looking, swirling and eddying over what was clearly a very uneven riverbed. It ran for as far as he could see in either direction. He'd followed it along to size it up, looking for narrowings, or crossings, or even trees that would support a line, and his hopes of getting round it had been dashed. It was a problem. A big one. It could put an end to his rescue operation before he even got it off the ground. But the forest offered him no alternatives, so he was just going to have to suck it up and hope that plain old dumb luck was on his side.

He shrugged off his pack at the water's edge and started getting undressed. With a sparser tree population down here, the wind was howling and its icy teeth sank into him instantaneously, gnawing at his heart. He sat to take off his boots, his already stiff fingers abandoned by their usual dexterity as he fumbled with the laces. By the time he was wearing nothing but sky, he was shivering fiercely, his teeth gritted so hard that his face ached. He bundled his clothes into his pack and tied his boots to it by the laces. Then he stood and swung the pack underarm, four times to build up speed, then let it go. It was a good strong throw, in spite of how his muscles were trying to lock up on him. The pack flew in a long arc and landed with an undignified 'flump' just at the water's edge on the other side. Now came the hard part.

He waded in with unwavering determination, the liquid ice rising up his horrified legs to just above his knees. Then, before he could petrify, he plunged into it bodily. It was so cold that it hurt. A burning, gripping, penetrating freeze that engulfed his world, filling his head with powerful instincts to turn back, to stop moving, to curl up and (the only one he was willing to listen to) to get to the opposite bank. His feet were so numb he could hardly detect the rocks below, but he pushed off from them, propelling himself out into the current. He poured everything he had into powering through. As he suspected, this river was stronger than it looked on the surface and he had no way of knowing how deep it was once his feet left the ground. He kept his eyes on his pack, using it as a marker. It drifted to the left as he swam. The first few flakes of snow began to meander down from the sky. Of course, he thought. Why not?

His body was strongly objecting to the efforts he was demanding from it. Every stroke was like trying to scythe through honey, and the bank he was striving for seemed to get no closer. He was used to the illusion though, from fieldwork and endurance training, and persevered with a faith that he was, in some difficult-to-measure way, making progress. But it dragged on minute after minute. The snow grew bigger, flakes clustering together in close-knit families while his limbs rapidly lost strength. His breathing was degenerating into sharp gasps, beginning to lose its conscienciously regulated rhythm. The water climbed his jaw as he sank by fractions, threatening to invade his mouth when he hauled air in. His pack left his periphery. He remained calm and determined, noting to himself that he'd have a little way to walk to get back on track. But several minutes later, when he still looked no closer and he could feel himself slowing down against his considerable will, a small part of him admitted that things were getting desperate.

He wanted to look back to see how far he was from the bank he'd left. He wanted to know if it was worth going back. But letting up for even a moment would be releasing control. The undercurrent would take him. So he kept going, quietly driving himself crazy with not knowing. He let out an inarticulate war cry, urging himself to try harder. Unfamiliar pangs of panic ran home from his peripheral nervous system, flashing up his spine into his brain, riding the sensations of life-sapping cold and a body losing the fight to keep moving. Stranger still, only part of it was about the possibility of drowning. Worse was the feeling that he was wasting time here, that he wasn't where he needed to be: where he could protect and look out for his team. He'd never panicked over something like that before. He'd been responsible for the safety of others plenty of times, and it had always been at the top of his priorities. Unshakably so. That was his job. But he'd never let a ticking clock get the best of his nerves. Here, now, it was all he could think about. Every second wasted was another that the enemy had to take down the people he'd come through the Invasion of New York with. Good people. Friends.

He was losing buoyancy. The deeper water sucked hungrily at his legs, making threats about its hidden strength. He made a concerted effort to get himself more horizontal and tilted in the water, an eddy gushing over his right shoulder. He windmilled his arm, battling to regain his position. The river dragged his submerged arm down, pulling him even more off balance. Freshwater smashed into his face, making him shut his eyes . He tumbled, and went under. He forced himself to open his eyes to get a blurry view of the grey, orienting himself against the comparatively pale sky. He clawed at the water with calculated frenzy and broke the surface, dragging a great lungful of air. He drove his arm forward to resume his strokes before his control was snatched away again. Ironically, the current which had sent him into a spin had also carried him further across. He was more than halfway now.

The going became more manageable from then on. Progress was excruciatingly slow but steady and he kept his eyes on the gradually approaching bank as a visual lifeline. All his fears and crowding, fluttering thoughts had been extinguished, leaving an empty quiet in his mind. All he was now was a focus on survival. He didn't even have room for relief as he moved into shallower waters. His insensible fingers blundered into a stone as it skated by. He had to wait for the next one to come along and block his sideways motion. He grasped it with both arms, clinging on with what strength he had left. There wasn't much. But his fight wasn't over. If he stayed here, he was just as dead as back in midstream. He had to get out of this water and get warm before he shut down completely.

At first, when he exerted his will on his frozen, exhausted muscles, nothing happened. He was locked up. He wasn't even shivering, which he dimly recognised as a bad sign. The intermittant wind stripped over him, raking him viciously. It would be dark soon. And he'd be no good to anyone if he died here. Not to mention, Natasha would never forgive him. Hell, now that he thought about it, he'd never forgive _himself_. The Avengers were the best gig he could ever have landed, regardless of how he'd come into it. He didn't feel like quitting now. He ground out a noise of frustration between his teeth, trying to psych himself up for moving, trying to _will _his body into responding. It didn't. And the snowfall began to thicken towards a whiteout. Beyond the giggle of rushing water, there was only the faraway hum of the enemy as they hunted for lost prey.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve drove his fingers into the earth to anchor himself in time before the stone under his boot gave way and fell silently from the cliff face. He counted four protracted seconds before he heard its remote clack below. He was drenched through. Snowflakes melted on contact with his skin, running in rivulets up his arms. Thor's head was like a wet mop on his shoulder, not to mention the combined load of his and Bruce's bodies were like a ton of bricks on his back. The weight was a serious problem. A lot of the handholds that would've taken him if he'd been scaling this cliff alone just couldn't support him like this. He really didn't know the limits of his healing factor, nobody did, but he wasn't convinced he'd survive a drop like that, nor could he make any confident claims about Thor. Bruce, however, he could be sure about. A fall like that would be enough to kill him five times over without doubt.

Furthermore, contrary to popular belief among Shield agents, Steve did tire, and he'd been running, fighting and evading capture with these two men on his back for over eight hours. He'd also survived a high speed crash and been shot twice, and the second of those bullets had really taken. Every time he moved his left leg, his hip mutely cried out in anguish, making sure he didn't forget that a foreign body was rubbing cruelly between his deep muscles. Fatigue made him tremble, and he was feeling the effects of lactic acid build-up. Usually, his body protected itself from that, being far more efficient at metabolising the available energy and removing the unhelpful by-products. But even his systems had their limits, and this two hour climb was pushing it. If his raging hunger was any indication, he was running out of fuel.

The sky was full of helicopters, hacking up the gathering darkness. At least six to his ear in the general vicinity. It betrayed a certain desperation on their part. They were going to have to pull their men out soon and abandon the search until morning. Their ground forces were probably concentrated in the woods that waited for him above, but that didn't worry him so much as the possibility of being found and targeted here on the cliff. That's why second priority to 'not falling' was 'speed'. The low visibility was on his side for now but with time, that too would turn against him. He needed to find shelter for the night.

He hauled himself and his considerable encumberance up towards a sturdy-looking little tree, which was daringly growing out of the cliff just at arm's length. His fingers strained to reach it and he had to adjust his footing to grasp it securely. It held, and he put his faith in it completely by letting go with his other hand, drawing his shoulders level with it. The trio of rifles he had slung over his right shoulder slipped down to his elbow, determined to be a nuisance. He shifted his grip as he pulled himself up past it, using it as a support. The rock crumbled under his left hand and he scrabbled to find another hold, but the stones broke loose in his grip and skittered down the vertical face, skipping over him into empty air. His hand slid down the cliff, his boots scuffing as he dropped, letting his right arm hook over the tree to save himself. The plant caught him with a jolt and his feet left the cliff face, swinging free. He braced himself, letting out a grunt of discomfort. And it was answered by another. He felt a shift in Bruce against the back of his shoulder, a subtle return of tension.

"Oh no," he muttered, wrapped around the crooked tree like a vice. His arms broke the rough bark off in flakes and they showered faintly away. "Doc, I wouldn't wake up now if I were you." Bruce's arm, which had been hanging loosely at his side, began to pull up with the natural reflex to hold onto something, finding the top of Steve's arm. "Alright, Bruce? Everything's fine, it's all okay, but do me a favour and please don't open your eyes. Just keep them shut, you hear me?" The groggy noise that overlapped his words told him very clearly that they were not really being absorbed; Bruce was still mostly asleep. The view of the way ahead was blocked by an overhang which jutted out a few feet above, so Steve looked down over his arms to the ravine floor far below, comparing the dizzying height with what he'd seen from the ground. It was difficult to make out through the falling snow. He couldn't be that far from the top now. He reached out to grab a unhelpfully shallow ledge on the left, and suddenly Bruce cried out in horror, his grip on Steve's arm immediately tightening. His other arm was tied down under the strapping, caught snugly between himself and Thor, and Steve felt it jerking to get free so that it could help hang on. Steve pressed himself to the cliff face. "Bruce! I need you to stop! I promised I'd get you out of here and I will but you have to calm down. Close your eyes and focus on the sound of my voice." He was promptly growled at.

Power rippled through the body on his back. The strapping constricted, making him gasp. "Bruce…" The fingers squeezing his arm became stronger, darkening to a dull greenish grey. They thickened, steadily compressing muscle into bone, pulverising the deltoid. "Agh! _Bruce!_ I can't get us out of this with a broken arm! You have to fight it!" Bruce roared in frustration. Steve couldn't breathe. A strap snapped and his shield dropped. His left hand shot down and snagged the end of the broken belt, halting its descent. Darkness crowded his vision with every heartbeat, pulsating. He shut his eyes, clinging on for dear life with just one hand. "You're okay," he rasped. The weight was pulling him away from the rock. "You're okay…"

At first he thought it was just his imagination, but after a few long seconds he found that the straps were, in fact, beginning to ease up. Bruce's ragged puffing subsided, and his hand released Steve's near-liquified arm. Steve panted, but brought his shield belt up to his mouth and put the strap between his teeth. With two arms once more, he drew a deep breath and strove on upward. It wasn't more than ten minutes before he hit the overhang. It forced him to lean back, out into empty space. His handhold shifted under the strain as he stretched and grasped the edge overhead, knocking a clump of snow off it. The handhold suddenly crumbled and he let it go, throwing his hand up alongside its brother on the ledge above, swinging out over the gaping void. He hung there from his fingers. He squared his jaw, and poured all his strength into performing a pull-up.

When he saw over the ledge and found himself looking out into white woodland, he wanted to shout aloud in joy. He shoved one arm into the snow and dragged himself forward. Mjollnir caught on the rocky ledge and he had to lean the other way, pushing his other arm out in front, fingers digging into the hardened ground for purchase. He bulldozed over the continuing agony of his hip to throw his leg up, and crawled to safety. A few feet from the side, he collapsed onto his stomach, breathing heavily. He let the belt drop from his mouth, and rested his head on the ground. He was shaking. Maybe it was the touch of exhausted hysteria, but suddenly it all seemed inexplicably funny, and Steve laughed into the deepening snow.

He leaned in a controlled skid down a hillside and dropped into the shelter of a small bank, into the tangled embrace of an old fir's roots. A soldier appeared about thirty feet away to his left and he threw his shield from his arm on a vertical plane. It sheared through the air in an elegantly straight line and crashed edge-on into the unlucky soldier's face, pitching him back into the snow before it rebounded up in a wide arc. Steve reached up and slipped his arm back into the straps as it came down. He knew very well that he was in control of it. He was the one making split-second calculations about trajectory and sending it to work. Yet, the way it always did exactly as it was told, the way it always returned to him, it was easy to anthropomorphise. He secretly embued it with attributes, the chief of which was loyalty; something that he'd had to sacrifice it for not so long ago. To show Bucky that they weren't enemies. He didn't know for sure whether it had worked, but he had a feeling. All the same, he was grateful to Tony for finding and retrieving his vibranium shield from the river. There could be no replacement.

Three more soldiers; two, three and four o'clock. He loosed his shield again, at an angle. It glided in a great circle through the trees, rising, and coming down to clip the soldier at two o-clock from behind. He did a face plant into the white stuff as the vibranium disc bounced away. It struck the trunk of a tree, knocking drifts of snow from its branches, and hit the second then the third startled soldiers on its homeward curve. The last soldier squeezed his trigger as he took the blow, releasing a stream of bullets into the ground as he fell. Steve refrained from frowning. His location was no secret from others now. They were going to descend on this place like a plague of locusts. He snatched his shield from the air and got moving again.

Armed men came out of the woodwork from every direction. He pulled up one of the rifles he'd taken from the crashed chopper in the ravine, and opened fire. Some fell, others took cover and a couple with a more steely disposition returned it. He had to keep turning to protect Thor and Bruce, and heard a bullet skim his own armour across the Asgardian's shoulder. He stayed on the move, and located a wall of earth a dozen feet tall that he could put his back to. He rushed with a pronounced limp down the hill towards it, bringing down more Russians. He took a glancing hit in his right bicep and swung round to return the favour on the perpetrator with a more definitive result. The shots were coming from everywhere, faster than he could deal with them. He ran out of bullets and tossed the rifle, grasping another one to replace it. He felt a sharp, hot burst against the left side of his neck under his jaw and a flood was unleashed. With most of his mind still very much occupied with neutralising enemies, avoiding more hits, and getting to that wall, a small voice politely let him know he'd been shot in the throat. Blood was gushing hotly down the side of his neck with every closely-spaced beat of his heart as he reached the foot of the hill. The change in gradient seemed to confuse his legs because they folded suddenly and he fell to his knees, still firing with deadly accuracy. A figure appeared at the top of the wall in front of him and he raised his gun to it, only to stop himself.

Hawkeye nocked another arrow and let it fly over Steve to hit a soldier straight in the eye. One after another, four in the same breath, he loosed arrows into their targets and saw them fall. He was down on one knee at the edge of the wall, his vantage point overlooking the scene. It was hard to hold his bow steady. After he'd pulled himself out of the river and made his rather forlornly naked way back to his pack, he'd gotten dried and dressed and wrapped himself up in an insulating foil blanket (as best he could with the pack on his back) to resume his journey. A few minutes into walking, his ability to shiver had returned with a vengeance, and it hadn't quite left him yet. But he persevered, using the miniscule spaces between muscle contractions to let the string go. His precision was at an all-time low, but his arrows were still making the targets and some were still dead on. Good enough to get this far alive.

His rather dramatic arrival wrought chaos. His arrows confounded the soldiers, compelling them towards poor decisions in where to hide, what to shoot. They'd lost the upperhand in a moment, and there was a new atmosphere of panic which reduced the group of trained militia into frightened men. As their numbers were cut down , soldiers started abandoning the fight, escaping into the woods from which they'd come. In less than a minute, the area was clear and the forest became softly quiet. The snow was still falling, giving the place an air of melancholy. Clint pushed himself to his feet, and through the snow and low light he noticed Steve doing likewise. The Captain's silhouette was astonishing in its bulk.

"Anyone ever mentioned your great sense of timing?" asked Steve.

Clint gave a quiet, pleased laugh, partly out of relief. "It has been brought up," he admitted. "Are they okay?"

"I think they're alright," replied Steve wearily. "Just taking a bit of a nap."

Clint smirked. "Did you mistake yourself for Buckaroo?"

"Uh… who?"

"Nevermind. Are _you _okay?" He frowned at the way Steve was holding his neck. "You hit?" he asked, concerned.

"Uh, yeah," Steve answered casually. He limped a couple of steps towards the slope that linked the top of the wall to lower ground and abruptly sank to his knees, driving the edge of his shield into the deep snow to support himself. Clint bolted into action, running down the mound's side and kneeling in front of him. Clint put down his bow and physically turned Steve so he could take a look. Now he was up close, he was deeply disturbed by the massive volume of dark red that stained the left side of Steve's neck, shoulder and chest. Steve lifted his hand off his neck experimentally to see if the bleeding had stopped and a thick jet poured out over his shoulder.

"Woah!" Clint grabbed Steve's hand and shoved it back in place, eyes wide.

"Bad?" asked Steve, grimacing.

Clint hesitated. "Um… no."

"I thought Shield agents were supposed to be good liars," Steve mused.

"I need to stitch you up," said Clint, ignoring that remark.

"We can't stay here. It'll be fine," said Steve.

"Steve, I'm pretty sure you're not getting very far with an arterial bleed." He slipped his pack off, looking up at Steve's pale face as he opened it up, finding and unzipping the medical kit. "I'm not even sure how you're staying upright with all that stuff on top of you. This isn't such a bad place to set up a camp; over here, in the shelter of this bank. We need to get inside in the next half hour anyway." Half an hour was being generous, they needed to get warm as soon as humanly possible. He set himself to tackling the knots Steve had tied in the strapping that bound Bruce and Thor to him, but he'd barely touched them when he noticed Mjollnir. He blinked, and nearly confronted Steve with a concise 'What?_' _but now clearly was not the time. Instead, he forced himself to ignore it and focus on the task at hand. He tried to work his fingers into the material but it was so tight that try as he might, he got nowhere. He pulled a face, annoyed. "I can't undo this," he confessed reluctantly, "you'll have to."

Steve merely nodded and took his hand off his neck, as though he'd forgotten how important it was to keep the pressure there, and started pulling at the knot. Clint jumped and hurried to stifle the bleeding with his hands. He reached into the medical kit and pulled out a packet of gauze. He tore the plastic with his teeth and pinched a square of clean white padding out. Blood surged from under his hand as he quickly moved it to put the gauze in its place. He blew out a short exhale.

"You're shaking," noted Steve, successfully untying the straps but maintaining the tension so that the guys wouldn't fall. "You alright?"

"Yeah. Went for a swim," he explained, trying to tape the gauze down with extremely sticky red fingers.

Steve glanced around at the heavily falling white flakes, which were happily settling all over the four of them. "You did _notice _that it's snowing, right?"

"Yes, thank you, Captain Sarcasm," Clint returned, making Steve smile. He let go of the dressing which was rapidly soaking crimson. "Pressure," he reminded Steve, and Steve pressed a hand over the gauze. Clint took hold of the strapping, unwrapping it by degrees to release Thor and Bruce. He'd have to ask about their attire later. Mjollnir came loose and plummeted, sticking itself to the ground before Clint could stop it. He caught Bruce as he fell sideways, gently lowering the badly beaten doctor. Thor remained draped over Steve and Clint had to pull him away, taking his weight for two tenuous seconds before he was forced to let him slouch like a dead body in the snow. "_Damn_ he's heavy!" Clint exclaimed, heaving him onto his back. At least he had some protection from Steve's armour. Clint picked up his insulating blanket from beside his pack, taking it to Bruce and wrapping him up in it hastily. Now he could concentrate on the real problem, moving to Steve's side.

A sound caught his ear from somewhere behind and he snapped round, snatching his bow up from the ground beside him, whipping an arrow from his quiver and firing it through the snow. The shadow uttered a cut-off cry and collapsed out of sight and out of mind. Steve braced his right hand on the ground, wilting, and Clint's attention was switched instantly back to him. He put his bow down once more and dove into the medical kit. He sloshed surgical spirit over his hands and used it to clean the fine, curved needle and the thread that was, thankfully, already attached. "You really don't need to," Steve insisted, although his voice lacked any conviction. "It'll close up on its own soon."

"'Soon', but not 'now', and 'now' is when you're bleeding out," Clint argued, getting into position. Whether he thought it necessary or not, Steve tilted his head obligingly to help give Clint better access. The gauze was sopping wet, and already past its capacity for absorption. He pulled back the tape and blood rolled out of the two inch gash. Steve's entire left side was darkly soaked. "Brace yourself," Clint advised. He pushed his thumb and finger into the wound to look for the nicked artery, wishing fervently that he wasn't shaking so much. He found what he was looking for. The artery had been torn so badly that he questioned his ability to repair what was left of it but he slipped the hook inside and, after several infuriating seconds, managed to push it through two walls of the vessel and pull it out, drawing them together. It was difficult not to let frustration distract him. He'd always been so good at stuff like this, but with his shivering arms and clumsy fingers it seemed to take him forever. Steve bore it out without a word of complaint or any noise of discomfort. Clint wasn't sure because he couldn't really see, he was doing it mostly by touch, but he thought the artery was marginally improving itself even as he worked. When he came to do the worst part, where he'd been worried that there wasn't enough left to stitch together, it wasn't as bad as he'd remembered, and he closed it up successfully. All the same, he felt compelled to apologise as he tied it off and cut the line.

"S'okay," Steve murmured mildly. "Did a good job…"

Clint didn't know if Steve was purposefully lying to assuage guilt, erroneously giving him the benefit of the doubt, or simply didn't know any better. Whatever it was, he'd take it. He started the process over on a larger scale with a suture to Steve's skin. It looked bad, but then stitches were rarely pretty. Still, he felt like more of a butcher than a surgeon when he poured some spirit onto a piece of gauze and used it to clean some of the blood away. Under the mess, Steve's skin was deathly white. Maybe he was closer to Dr Frankenstein. He taped a clean dressing in place and sat back, rolling his tight shoulderblades. "Is there anything else?" he asked, exhausted. When he looked at Steve's face, he saw that he had his eyes closed. He looked like he'd fallen asleep on his knees, but he mumbled a reply.

"Uh… No… Don't think so."

It didn't fill Clint with confidence, and he gave him a quick once over regardless. He found the graze on Steve's right upper arm and put a few stitches in that to help it heal faster. Evidence of another graze had left a tear in Steve's t-shirt over his ribs but the wound itself was gone. There was just the faintest trace of blood which seemed to have dribbled from his right ear. "What happened here?" he asked, lightly tapping Steve's jaw just next to the mark.

"What?"

"You been bleeding from your ear?"

"Perforated eardrum. It's fine now."

Clint took his word for it. He also found a small, bloodstained hole in Steve's trouser leg just above his left knee but couldn't find anything behind it. When he asked about it, Steve didn't say anything. "Steve?" he prompted.

"Mm?"

It sounded like such an effort to give him that much of a response that Clint decided to let it slide. Instead, he prioritised getting the four of them inside somewhere safe and warm. He folded his bow and tucked it away in its holster.

When Clint trained, he didn't specifically train for strength. He trained for accuracy, speed, facility and endurance. Strength was an inevitatable by-product. But he hadn't taken the time to properly treat his hypothermia and he was still in real danger from it. So as he unpacked a pair of tents, he was forced to accept how much slower he was, and how deeply everything was wearing him out and be patient with himself. Getting them up was a cinch. They sprang eagerly from their packs and he positioned them looking into each other at the foot of the slightly overhanging bank, where the snow was thin on the ground. Pegging them down took longer, as did setting up the camoflage windbreak. The windbreak was made of specialised stealth fabric which diffused the colours around it to avoid creating a distinct shape. Its elastic properties made it easy to adapt to any shape, attachable by pegs and adhesive nodes to its surroundings. Strictly speaking, it wasn't his. It was more of an unofficial loan, but where did you return a book to once the library had burned down? He used it to enclose the two tents, for extra protection from the cold and from outsiders. He was just giving the arrangement a final once over when he detected movement at his seven o-clock. He paused for just a flicker of a second to register it, then he was pulling his bow and an arrow, snapping the bow open and turning.

His eyes found the blurry figure crouched low among the trees, aiming his rifle directly at him through the gap between two rocks. With cold, trembling arms, he let his arrow fly and it struck the left-hand stone uselessly, inches off its mark. His heart jolted at his fatal mistake but before his fingers could even make contact with the next arrow, a gleam of light flashed through the gap and Steve's shield smashed the soldier's face hard enough to throw his head back and tip him out of sight in a boneless heap. The shield rebounded upward and off the branch of a tree, spinning high and back towards the man who'd sent it. It plowed into the snow, bouncing once along its way, then wheeled a little up the mound and fell flat just a few feet shy. Steve was on his hands and knees, breathing heavily. Clint scanned the area for any other activity but all was quiet.

He trudged back to his teammates, vanishing as they were under snowfall, and gave Steve an acknowledging clap on the shoulder as he bent to pick up Bruce. It was no full-body lift. He just hooked his arms under Bruce's and dragged him backwards, behind the windbreak and across the small campsite to lie him down inside a tent. When he came back out, he faced Steve doing the same thing with Thor. He opened his mouth to protest but Steve shook his head. "I got him," he assured quietly. "Go."

He would've liked to argue, but the fire was more important. So he left to fetch a good stock of firewood and by the time he returned, everything and everyone was safely inside camp. Steve was sitting in the open mouth on one tent, looking dog tired. He'd lain Thor down in the opposite tent next to Bruce, and spread the foil over the two of them. Clint cleared the snow from between the tents with his boots and had a fire going in no time. He sorted through his pack for a pan, scooped some snow into it and set it on the fire to melt. It was only when he stopped and took a seat next to Steve that he realised how loudly he was breathing. Steve, on the other hand, was completely silent. He studied his fellow Avenger. "Steve, you with me?"

Steve was worryingly pale and there was a permanent furrow in pain on his brow but he nodded. "I'm with you."

"What's wrong with your leg?"

He winced at the question. "There's a bullet in my hip."

Clint closed his eyes. "You're kidding," he said. "Please tell me you're kidding."

"Nothing we can do about it," said Steve. "It's in too deep."

"It's a long way back to the safe house," Clint warned.

"I can make it," he claimed assuredly. He met Clint's somewhat sceptical gaze. "Thanks for coming, by the way."

Clint shrugged modestly. "Thanks for being alive when I got here."

"Did you come by the safe house?" asked Steve. "Any news on Tony?"

"He wasn't back yet but he was on his way." He watched the effect of his reply on Steve's face and smiled as he got a couple of tin cups and a box of teabags out of his pack. "Tasha's right, you're an open book."

He could feel Steve giving him a quizzical look. "What do you mean?"

"I mean you're taking the blame for all of this and I know that because it's written in block capitals right across your face."

Steve looked confused. "Stark and Dr Banner were following my orders. I sent them in there. If I'd gone myself, I never would have been detected and this whole thing could've been avoided."

"You didn't know what you were up against."

"Exactly."

"No, I'm saying you made the best moves you could with the knowledge you had at the time. If it had been Shield working with the same lack of intel, their first move would've been to send a stealth jet over. It would've been shot down and a man would be dead for nothing. They'd be no closer to the completing the mission. You, though, managed to infiltrate the base and rescue our lost man without any loss of life on our end. I call that a win."

Steve seemed to mull that over before saying, "Not the worst pep talk I've ever heard."

Clint grinned. "I'm guessing it would have to be pretty bad to win that title."

"It is tough to beat 'Good work, Rogers; keep it up and we'll make a fine toothpick outta you yet'," he agreed. "You?"

"Probably 'Well, your other leg works doesn't it? If you leave now, you can be back by nightfall. Get moving, agent,'" Clint smiled ruefully at the memory. "Agent Joplin always did have a knack for motivating me. Made me like him. But then, he turned out to be Hydra so…"

An expression of quiet sympathy had stolen over Steve's face. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright. I didn't have any deep attachment to him. It's just… confusing," he admitted.

Steve looked solemn. "I hope you're not confused about any of us."

Clint's smile returned, warmer this time. "Steve, this team is one of the few things I'm still clear on. Relatively speaking of course because I have to ask…" He pointed at Mjollnir, which stood on its head by the mouth of the tent near Steve. "Is Mjollnir cheating on Thor with you?"

Bruce woke to the sound of two voices. They were familiar, and safe, and holding a discussion without urgency. Which all left him free to wonder what the heck had happened that he felt as though he'd been in a car accident. The whisper of the fire helped him out, conjuring pictures of the wilderness. Wilderness was relevant. He'd crashed into one of those recently.

"Isn't that against the magic rules?"

"_I _thought so."

"It's obviously a little more complicated than we thought, I mean there was a time when Thor couldn't use it."

"There was?"

"In New Mexico, when he first landed. I was on duty guarding Mjollnir when he came for it. I watched him try to pick it up but it wouldn't play ball."

"What changed?"

"I don't know. Something about throwing down with a metal giant. He called it, it answered."

"Dr Banner?"

Bruce 'mmm'ed in response to his name. He heard movement and someone came to crouch by his feet. "You need anything, Bruce?" asked Hawkeye.

"Help me up," he requested.

"I think you should probably stay down."

"Mmhm. Help me up."

Clint did as he was told, supporting him as he got upright. He was met with the rather cosy sight of an enclosed camp. Water was just coming to the boil over the fire. "How do you feel?" asked Steve.

"Better than the last time I woke up," he replied.

Steve looked sheepish. "Sorry about that."

Bruce huffed a surprised laugh. "You're sorry?

"Did something happen?" asked Clint, glancing between them.

"Oh I'm traumatised for life but, Steve, don't be sorry about it," Bruce insisted. He remembered something. "Your arm… Is it-?"

"It's okay," said Steve. "Nothing's broken." He held a hand up to pre-empt Bruce's apology. "It's fine, Doc. Really. I'm just glad you got control when you did."

"I didn't. He just wasn't strong enough," said Bruce. "Neither of us were." Clint was still looking at them both with a question in his eyes and he felt compelled to explain. "I woke up to find him carrying me, carrying _us_," he corrected, "up a cliff. And I just about ripped his arm off."

Steve looked amused by the slight exaggeration while Clint stared at him. "You carried them up a cliff?"

"A big cliff," Bruce elaborated, feeling that it was an important detail. "A very, very big cliff."

Under their united gaze, Steve shrugged. "Cable car was out of order."

Author's note: Okay, guys, well I'm afraid that's it. I've been putting off posting this because I just hate unfinished stories and there's absolutely no sense of closure to this one. But this story hasn't generated enough interest for me to justify spending any more time on it when I've got other things I have to commit to now. I'm really sorry to everyone who was following it, I deeply appreciate the reviews, there were some real beauts in there. Thanks for reading.


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